RESCUE, RESCUER, RESCUED
The Righteous among the Nations and the Holocaust
European and Comparative Perspectives

Location and Schedule: Paris, December 2006
Call for Papers Deadline: June 1st, 2005

Jointly organized by the Centre for International Studies (CERI) and Research and the Centre for the European History in the Twentieth Century (CHEVS) of the National Foundation of Political Science

with the support of the Foundation for Remembrance of the Holocaust (Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah)

Directed by Jacques Semelin, this symposium aims to develop a deeper understanding of rescue behaviours in Nazi Europe by analysing their national and historical context, as well as their social and geographical environment. Our goal is therefore to gather the most relevant academic contributions on a topic which has been insufficiently dealt with in the social sciences. The conference will emphasize comparative perspectives to examine not only the acts of rescue but also the ways in which they are remembered.

The symposium also aims to explore this issue as applied to other historical cases:

• Armenian genocide
• Rwandan genocide
• Ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia

This is an academic symposium, aiming to examine the capacity of the social sciences to understand rescue practices in deadly situations. However, a panel discussion with witnesses and survivors may also be organized.
International academic committee (preliminary list):
Claire Andrieu (FR), Wolfgang Benz (DE), Bert Jan Flim (NL), Philippe Joutard (FR), Joel Kotek (FR), Michael Marrus (CA), Bob Moore (UK), Nechama Tec (USA), Renée Poznanski (IL), Henry Rousso (FR), Annette Wieviorka (FR)

Papers are anticipated particularly from historians, sociologists, political scientists and social psychologists. Regarding the Holocaust, contributions dealing with Eastern European countries are especially welcome. The conference organizers want to encourage new academic research on rescue in genocidal situations.

Themes include (but are not limited to):

• Financial and economic aspects of rescue
• Rescue practices, warfare and geographic borders
• Socio-political, cultural and religious conditions of rescue
• Role of local elites in rescuing (such as mayors and clerics)
• Relationships between collaboration, resistance and rescue
• Breaking the law: to be rescued and to become a rescuer
• Identities: rescued and rescuers
• Relevant methods and scales for rescue understanding
• Memory-related issues

Proposals must include names, affiliations and an abstract (up to 1 000 words) emphasizing the topic, the sources, the methods and the comparative dimension.

Abstract proposals should be submitted by March 1st, 2005 as an attached Word document, to both: