Week 0: Senior Project Introduction

Hello, my name is Harry Nadaner. The goal of my senior project is to understand the differing survival rates of Jews during the Holocaust in different countries under German occupation during World War Two. I will specifically be examining two countries with particularly high death rates, Poland and Greece, and two with particularly low death rates, Denmark and Italy. Among the factors I will be considering are: the degree of collaboration of local groups with Nazi forces; the extent of rescue efforts by the local non-Jewish populations; the degree of autonomy which the countries of focus were given under German occupation; assimilation and degree of segregated living by the Jewish populations; geography; responses by different sects of Christianity, and intermarriage rates of the Jewish population.  The topic is personal to me. Both of my father’s parents are Holocaust survivors from Warsaw, Poland. The ultimate goal of my project is to understand the reason for the wide disparities in Jewish survival rates by country. Next week I will be blogging about an interview that I had with an historian working with the Claims Conference. The Claims Conference is an organization that works with the German government to secure compensation for Holocaust survivors. For my onsite I will be conducting weekly interviews with experts in the field. 

For this week I am setting up an interview with the Claims Conference, an organization that focuses on getting Holocaust survivors just compensations. The Claims Conference is also serving as my onsite. In addition to the interview, I am reading 4 books on the exact topic. Following my interview I will check back in with a further analysis.

Link to my proposal: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B3PLG75s-0FGe4wPt9WPUbncYQPGjLSFWMbuGxgZC_U/edit