https://apple.news/AfpTtoF2ITJy5gZXT6wOnKA
Omer Bartov is the Brown University professor of European history. For the past 20 years, he’s reconstructed the 400-year history of one Eastern European border town to show the deep-seated roots that led to genocide during World War II. He studied and analyzed the relationships that existed among Ukrainians, Poles and Jews in the town of Buczacz, where in a few years’ time, the German and Ukrainian police would almost completely eradicate Buczacz’s Jewish residents. Ukrainian nationalists, in turn, would devastate Buczacz’s Polish population. He wanted to focus on the individuals who carried out the genocide, rather than the large systematic forces’ eyes, seeing how neighbors turned on neighbors in the years leading up to World War II.
Bartov continued his studies when he moved to the United States and quickly noticed the lack of attention that individuals’ accounts were given, hence his determination to study a smaller, more concentrated area. I think he’s totally right in that more studies should be centered around individual views and diaries and studying the dynamics of people within communities. I think then can we fully contextualize, like Bartov wants, history.
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