5th programme in the series ‘The Holocaust as an Interdisciplinary Tapestry’:
German Professionals and the Holocaust with Dr. William Frederick Meinecke Jr.
“The Holocaust as an Interdisciplinary Tapestry” is an 8-part series that will engage with scholars and experts who grapple with themes related to Holocaust studies. The series will explore the multifaceted discipline of Holocaust Studies through different lenses. Our experts will challenge us to understand the causes, impacts, and legacies of the Holocaust.
The most significant perpetrators of the crimes committed during the Holocaust are well known: Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich, as well as the SS, among others. But less known are the contributions of “ordinary” people—doctors, lawyers, teachers, civil servants, officers, and other professionals throughout German society—whose individual actions, when taken together, resulted in dire consequences. Put simply, the Holocaust could not have happened without them. This programme will explore the motives and contribution of ordinary German professionals and their contribution to the Nazi racial agenda and to Nazi crimes.
William Frederick Meinecke Jr holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland at College Park. The title of his dissertation was, Conflicting Loyalties: The Supreme Court in Weimar and Nazi Germany 1918-1945. In 1992, he joined the staff of the Wexner Learning Centre of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, working on a number of programmes and books. In June 2000 he joined the staff of Museum’s Education Division. For the last twenty years Meinecke Jr has worked with law enforcement officers, judges, prosecutors and attorneys in the Law Enforcement and Society: Lessons of the Holocaust training programme. He is currently working in the Museum’s Levine Institute for Holocaust Education on programming for the Initiative on the Holocaust and Professional Leadership.
This programme is in partnership with Classrooms Without Borders, Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, the Ghetto Fighters’ House, Generations of the Shoah, and Liberation75.