Academic Conference: Filling the Void

About the Conference

Filling the Void
Studying and conveying history to a new generation

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During the occupation of Northern Greece by the German Army from 1941 to 1944, the campus of Anatolia College became the headquarters of the Army Group E. During this time, a system of bunkers was constructed by the German army underneath Macedonia Hall. These bunkers include four vault rooms locked off by massive doors, though only remnants survive today.

Anatolia College has proposed a project entitled “The Matrix - Remembering the past Managing the future”, which will renovate the bunkers into an information center for schools, universities, and community members from Thessaloniki and the wider region. Not only will this information center create a powerful memorial for the Anatolia students and staff deported and killed during the War, it will also create a tangible link to a period of the region’s history of which few physical traces survive. While the proposal has been drafted, the question of how best to utilize the sight and organize the center remains open.

Anatolia College and the German Consulate General in Thessaloniki have organized a conference, entitled “Filling the Void”, to discuss the question of how the bunkers may be used to contribute to historical memory. Scholars of various fields will convene to explore possible ways of filling the void of historical memory of Nazi-German occupation in Greece, especially for younger generations whose connection to the 1940’s is extremely distant. The conference will address the importance of preserving memory from this period of global tragedy for the benefit of tomorrow’s population, and participants will consider the bunkers as a sight capable of making an impact on visitors that deepens their understanding of this historical period.

Anatolia College states the goal of the Matrix project as: “Rendering Anatolia College as a landmark of memory. Considering that Anatolia is an educational institution, such an initiative will trigger further research on collective memory management with an understanding that remembering the past is always related to the agony of managing the present and envisioning a brighter future.” The conference will explore different ways of presenting the bunkers and will think critically about how to engage new generations.

The conference will take place at Anatolia College on Monday, October 7th, 2019 at Bissell Library and will include input from museologists, historians, and a variety of other experts.

The conference will be held in English.

Program

All panels will be moderated by Mr. Filios Stangos.

10.00 hrs Opening remarks by President Dr. Panagiotis Vlachos
10.15 hrs Address by Consul General Sibylla Bendig

10.30 hrs First panel

German occupation as a catalytic converter for history in Northern Greece
Participants:
Prof. Stratos Dordonas
Dr. Thomas Lutz
Dr. Evanghelos Chekimoglou

12.00 hrs Lunch break

13.00 hrs Second panel

Design of a memorial
Participants:
Dr. Ulrich Baumann
Prof. Vanessa Tsakalidou
Ms. Erato Koutsoudaki, MSc
Prof. Alkmini Paka

14.30 hrs Coffee break

15.00 hrs Third panel

Can modern technology replace an analogue experience?
Participants:
Ms. Karen Jungblut, Ph.D.
Dr.-Ing. Marc Grellert
Prof. Giorgos Antoniou
Dr. Valentin Schneider

16.30 hrs Conclusions presented by: Mr. Filios Stangos
17.00 hrs Closing remarks by Consul Carsten Müller

Speakers

Giorgos Antoniou is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and received his PhD from the European University Institute, Florence in 2007. He has been a Research Fellow of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah in Paris (2005-2007) and a visiting lecturer at Yale University (2007-2008). His research interests include the legacy and memory of conflicts in post-conflict societies; the Holocaust in Greece; the study of collective memory and wars, and public history He has published in various journals, including the Journal of Peace Research, History and Theory, Memoria e Ricerca, and others.  His most recent publication is the Holocaust in Greece (with Dirk Moses), Cambridge University Press, 2018. He is a member of IHRA and current holder of the International Chair of WWII in ULB in Belgium. 

Dr. Ulrich Baumann, historian, born 1967, is Deputy Director of the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and studied at universities in Freiburg and Berlin. His dissertation entitled “Zerstörte Nachbarschaften” (‘Destroyed Neighbourhoods’) is on Christians and Jews in South German rural and small town communities (published 2000). From 1999 to 2003, he was research assistant for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, and served from 2002 – 2005 as one of the curators of the permanent exhibition at the Information Centre at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and subsequently as curator and coordinator of several other exhibitions, such as “Was damals Recht war”, “Soldaten und Zivilisten vor Gerichten der Wehrmacht” (Victims of Nazi Military Justice), “Fire! Anti-Jewish Terror in November 1938”, “Facing Justice – Adolf Eichmann on Trial”, “Mass Shootings” and “The Holocaust from the Baltic to the Black Sea 1941–1944”. Aside from the foundation´s work, he has been pursuing a publication project on a gender history of female entrepreneurs and business owners in Berlin between 1900 and 1961.

Dr. Evanghelos Chekimoglou is an economist and historian (PhD, MA, BA) who is currently Principal Curator of the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki.  He has served as the Director of the following institutions: National Bank of Greece- Cultural Centre for Northern Greece, Businessmen’s Cultural Society for Northern Greece, and Mount Athos Photographic Archive. He has also served as Directing Consultant at the newspaper Makedonia and worked as a columnist and historical series writer for Greek newspapers (currently for Ethnos).  In addition, he has produced several history series for Greek television.  Publisher of the history magazine Thessalonikeon Polis (23 volumes), he has curated more than fifty exhibitions. As a scholar, he has written more than one hundred papers and forty research books pertaining to Greek business history and the local history of Thessaloniki. 

Stratos Dordanas was born on September 2, 1968, in the city of Stuttgart, Germany. He has participated in numerous academic conferences in Greece and abroad, as well as in graduate seminars and symposia. He is a regular member of the Greek Historical Society. Since 2013, he has been Assistant Professor in History, Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki, Greece). His interests are focused on the study of relations between Germany and the Balkan countries (19th-20th century), as well as on questions regarding the history of the Greek Macedonian region. He specializes in political-diplomatic and social history, in the study of military and civil conflicts, and in the two world wars.

Dr. Marc Grellert teaches at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and is co-founder of the company Architectura Virtualis. The focus of his research and work are Virtual Reconstructions and conveying of knowledge with the help of digital media.  In 1994 he initiated the Virtual Reconstruction of synagogues destroyed by the Nazis. In 2007 he received his doctorate in the potentials of digital technology for the culture of remembrance.

Karen Jungblut, Director of Global Initiatives, USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, University of Southern California. Dipl.-Pol. (Freie Universität Berlin).
Karen Jungblut oversees and manages a global portfolio of partnerships and programs for USC Shoah Foundation. With the USC Shoah Foundation since 1996, Karen led an international and multilingual staff to successfully index the archive of 55,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses, developed and implemented methodologies to index newly added video testimonies of other genocides and mass violence. , an initiative integrating videotaped Holocaust testimony taken by other organizations around the world into the Visual History Archive. In the past five years, Karen has developed approaches to the documentation of more current events of mass violence, as well as headed the production and piloting of USC Shoah Foundation’s program.

Erato Koutsoudaki – Yerolymbou studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens, graduating in 2000, after which she worked as a freelance architect for 15 years. She also holds an MSc in Museology and Cultural Heritage Management from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the University of Western Macedonia (2006). Over the last 14 years, she has been working both in the public and private sector running a successful exhibition design studio, EY CULTURE SERVICES. Erato is vividly involved in public discourse concerning museums in Greece and her work has been exhibited and published both locally and abroad. In the course of many years, her practice has developed an expertise in the field of industrial heritage, as well as in historical and thematic museums. Please visit www.eratokoutsoudaki.com for further information on her studio's activities.

Dr. Thomas Lutz is the Head of the Memorial Museums Department at the Topography of Terror Foundation. Following his training as a teacher of History and Social Studies, Dr. Lutz supervised the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace for German groups as a conscientious objector at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. He then established the Memorial Museums Department, publishes the GedenkstättenRundbrief (actual No. 195), and the Online-GedenkstättenForum, which coordinates the work of memorials to Nazi victims in Germany with increasingly more international connections. Among others he has founded the IC MEMO (International Committee for Memorial Museums for Victims of Public Crimes; ICOM), and is a German delegate to the IHRA, and an advisor to UNESCO on different projects in South-East-Europe.

Alkmini Paka was born in Thessaloniki in 1957 and graduated from Anatolia College in 1975. She is an architect – engineer (diploma /Aristotle University of Thessaloniki /1981). She holds a M. Arch from the University of California – Berkeley (1982), a “Diplome d' Etudes Approfondies” (D.E.A.) in ‘’Géographie – Aménagement du Patrimoine” from the Université de Paris IV - Sorbonne (1984) and a M.A. in Conversation Studies from the I.A.A.S. - University of York, U.K. (1985).
She has worked as a researcher at the Academy of Architecture in Paris (1987-1989), as an architect restorer and exhibition designer for the Greek Ministry of Culture (1993-2000) and as a free-lance architect (1989-1993 / 2000-  ). From 2005 to 2017, she taught in the post graduate program of the Greek Open University “Environmental Design of Cities and Buildings”. She was elected lecturer of architectural and urban design, at the School of Architecture A.U.Th. in 2004 and she is currently associate professor & Head of the School of Architecture at A.U.Th.. She has designed numerous museum exhibitions and carried out private and public design projects.

Valentin Schneider holds a PhD in History (Université de Caen, 2013) and a PhD in Politics & International Relations (University of Nottingham, 2016). He specializes in the everyday life in Europe during and after the Second World War and is an expert on military occupation, war captivity and burial culture. He has curated various exhibitions for institutional organizations in France and is an author of several books. He is currently managing a three-year project at the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens that is fully funded by the German ministry of foreign affairs through the "German-Greek Fund for the Future", with the goal of creating a database of the German military units that were present in Greece between 1941 and 1944/45. More information: www.valentinschneider.eu

Filios Stangos is a journalist with ample experience in world affairs. He has worked as a Brussels correspondent (1994-1997 and 2002-2005) where he produced the “Eurocentrics” weekly EU affairs news-magazine for ERT (Hellenic Public Broadcasting Corp.). He has covered extensively several global hotspots, such as the wars in Serbia/Kosovo (1999) and Georgia/S. Ossetia (2008) as well as post 9/11 Pakistan (1999), Afghanistan (2005) and Iraq (2007). He has directed and produced numerous current affairs documentaries (“Our Lady Went Away With The Water” 2005, “Afghanistan, A Journey In Time” 2005, “Turkey at a Crossroads” 2007 et al.). From 2008 to 2010 he co-hosted the world affairs news-magazine “Correspondents” (ERT). In 2005 he received the Bobolas Foundation “Best TV Reporting” Award for his coverage of the S.E. Asia tsunami crisis. He holds a degree in Political Science/International Relations (ULB) and has served as Press Advisor to the late Minister for European Affairs of Greece, Yannos Kranidiotis. He is fluent in English, French and Italian. Since 2011 he is the Managing Director of the Municipal Corporation for Information, Broadcasting, and Communication (DEPThE) of the City of Thessaloniki comprising one regional TV network (TV100) and two local radio networks (FM100 & FM100,6). In 2017 he directed and produced the historical documentary "October 30th 1944 - The neglected liberation" on Thessaloniki under the German occupation.

Venetia (Vanessa) Tsakalidou graduated from the School of Architecture, AUTh with honors. She holds a PhD in architectural design from AUTh and an M.Arch from the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL. She was senior editor of annual review KTIRIO: Architecture+Design and international review Architecture in Greece and co-author in Modernism and Architectural Education, do_co.mo.mo_03 (2007) and Memory–Museum–City (2013). She is the National Selector for the International Piranesi Award. She is currently an assistant professor at AUTh, teaching architectural design and theory, and is a founding member of the award winning studio 40.22.ARCHITECTS in Thessaloniki.

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