CIHGS Seminar: Barnabas Balint (USHMM), ‘Writing a History of Animals During the Holocaust’

Animals are hardly ever the focus of Holocaust history, but they do appear throughout its sources. This paper charts where and how animals can be found in archives and suggests an analytical approach for incorporating animals into a history of the Holocaust. It argues that animals hold multiple positions in the history of the Holocaust, as tools of persecution, elements of the human experience, and points of memory. Although animals have not been viewed as a category of analysis for the Holocaust before, recent trends in Holocaust studies have developed the idea of an environmental history, paying close attention to nature and the relationship between humans and their environment. This paper reveals how animals are a part of this environment, too. However, the strong emotional connection between humans and animals (such as their pets), as well as the ways animals were often also weaponised by perpetrators highlights certain specificities in the case of animals. By identifying and exploring the sources that reveal the positions animals held during the Holocaust, this paper develops a methodological approach to finding animals in the archives and acknowledging their contribution to history. It identifies some of the key themes that emerge from animal focused histories of the Holocaust and suggests further avenues for research in this area.