Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies

The Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies at Appalachian State University, in collaboration with Western Galilee College, presents "New Insights on the Holocaust," an international conference held July 16-17, 2025, via Zoom.

The 2025-26 theme is “Rescue Inaction or Rescue in Action: Religion and Rescue during the Holocaust.” As new materials are discovered regarding rescues of Jews by religious communities during the Holocaust, old and new debates emerge about the role of religious leaders. This international online conference will highlight recent evidence about religious-led rescues during the Holocaust with keynote speakers like Doris Bergen and Michael Hesemann, bringing Holocaust and genocide scholars up to date on the latest perspectives on Holocaust rescue by religious leaders and groups.

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Click here to register for the July 16 Zoom.

4:30 PM - 6:15 PM: Panel: Samples of European Christians’ Role in Holocaust Rescue

• “Three Examples of Protestant Rescuers Motivated by Faith during the Holocaust” with Esther Gonzales, graduate student in the Holocaust and Genocide Studies program at Kean University
  With impending danger and the imminent threat of death looming over them, Protestant rescuers, Corrie ten Boom in the Netherlands, the villagers of Le Chambon in France, and the Confessing Christians in Germany, took part in rescue and resistance efforts during the Holocaust. Motivated by their profound faith in Jesus Christ and guiding biblical principles, these rescuers became active members in underground resistance groups, hid Jews, aided in refugee resettlement processes, and used their voice to actively stand against Nazism. Holocaust scholars have viewed rescue of one, as the rescue of many. In doing so, Protestant rescuers aided in the survival of a rich culture and Jewish history. Rescuer Corrie ten Boom displayed normocentric motives in her rescue efforts: she had seen examples of compassion and hospitality from a young age. Her efforts included hiding Jews in her home, the Beje, to advocating for women interned in a concentration camp and later opening a home for refugee rehabilitation and resettlement. In France, Magda and André Trocmé displayed allocentric motives, stemming from deep feelings of empathy and compassion, and led the villagers in Le Chambon to become a city of refuge. They did not turn any Jewish refugee away who came to their doorsteps. The Confessing Christians in Germany felt the struggle of Nazism quickly, with laws established against them. Their rescue efforts presented as axiological motives, promoted from moral principles for justice and sanctity of life. In some ways, they spoke against Hitler’s ideals, yet they concluded that collectively they should have done more.
• “Catholics in Protestant Lands: An Unexpected Partnership for the Rescue of Jews in France” with Paul J. Kutner, Ph.D. candidate at American University
  Much is known about the one population in France that came to the rescue of Jews more than any other: Protestants, descended from the Huguenots who lived in isolation where their ancestors fled before 1789. However, by 1940, these Protestant towns had Catholics, about whom little has been written. This paper examines the roles played by Catholics involved in the rescues in the two largest Protestant strongholds, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon, and Dieulefit and the surrounding area in the Drôme. On the Plateau, census records show that only two of the villages were majority Protestant (Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and Le Mazet-Saint Voy), but all the others—all within a few square miles—were overwhelmingly Catholic. Catholics acted in different ways by providing shelter or food locally, or in smuggling Jews to safety in Switzerland. In Dieulefit, with its “old” population of Protestants and a “new” population of Catholics, much is known about the Protestants and their school, the École de Beauvallon. Yet, about 50% of the local population was Catholic, and many helped Jews. This paper argues that as the war started and then progressed, Protestants set an example that their Catholic neighbors and contacts further afield followed, but that later in the war, these two populations—previously enemies—relied on each other to save Jews. It answers important questions about who these Catholics were, how they broke from the hierarchy, and what inspired them to act before the Catholic Church of France changed its tune about Vichy.

6:15 PM - 7:00 PM: Break

7:00 PM - 8:30 PM: Keynote Lecture #1

• “Betrayal or Salvation? Religious Conversion and the Holocaust” with Doris Bergen, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Chair in Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto
  Religious conversion during the Holocaust, specifically conversion from Judaism to Christianity, is an uncomfortable topic that has received little scholarly attention. Two widespread assumptions are that conversion was rare (at least official conversion, as opposed to “passing”) and that it made no difference, since Nazi antisemitism was based on “race”. This talk revisits those assumptions using a wide array of sources, most of them personal accounts, from the time and since, by Jews and non-Jews. Conversion, it turns out, was not rare, and in certain places and circumstances, it was a significant factor in the survival of individuals and even families. Should conversion to Christianity therefore be considered as an aspect of rescue? Or is it more appropriately understood as a component of genocide (intentional destruction of a religious or ethnic group “as such”)?

Thursday, July 17, 2025

Click here to register for the July 17 Zoom.

9:00 AM - 10:00 AM:

• “Between Cross and Crown: Vatican Diplomacy and the Bulgarian Rescue of Jews in WWII” with Yaron Pasher, professor in the Holocaust Studies program at Western Galilee College
  This paper examines the role of Vatican diplomacy in the rescue of Jews during WWII, focusing on Bishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) and the unique case of Jewish survival in Bulgaria. It highlights Roncalli’s efforts as Apostolic Delegate in Istanbul, where he collaborated with Jewish Agency representative Chaim Barlas, issued protective documents, and directly appealed to leaders like King Boris III. In parallel, it explores Bulgaria’s internal resistance, led by figures like Dimitar Peshev, which resulted in the near-total rescue of its native Jewish population, despite the simultaneous deportation of over 11,000 Jews from annexed territories. The paper argues for a reevaluation of individual moral courage within institutional structures, challenging narratives of Vatican passivity and underscoring the complex dynamics of resistance under authoritarian regimes.

10:15 AM - 11:15 AM:

• “The Swedish Israel Mission and Göte Hedenquist Rescuing Jews” with Julia Englander, professor in the Department of History at the University of Stockholm
  Englander's presentation is based on original research on the Swedish Israel Mission (Svenska Israelsmissionen), a Christian organization founded in 1875 with the goal of converting Jews to Christianity. While its early focus was evangelism, the Mission’s activities in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly in Vienna, came to include rescue efforts. During World War II, the Swedish Israel Mission, under the leadership of Birger Pernow, worked with the Swedish Missionary Society to rescue Jews and Christians of Jewish descent from Austria. It is believed that about 3,000 people were helped to escape Austria, with about 300 finding refuge in Sweden. The presentation will center around Göte Hedenquist, a Swedish priest who was ordained in Uppsala in 1936 and arrived in Vienna later that year. From 1936 to 1940, he served as the director of the mission station there (Schwedische Mission Stockholm, Missionsstation Wien). Based on previously unexplored material, Englander will shed light on Hedenquist’s role in these rescue efforts and provide new insights into the motivations and actions of religious leaders during the Holocaust.

11:15 AM - 12:45 PM: Break

12:45 PM - 1:45 PM:

• “Unknown Supporters of Jews: How Jehovah’s Witnesses Helped Fellow Jewish Citizens during Nazi Terror” with Christoph Wilker, independent historian
  Jehovah’s Witnesses distributed protest leaflets, rejected the Hitler salute and the oath to the Fuhrer; and they refused to serve in the military during the National Socialist era in Germany and Europe. They were fully aware of the fact that their resistance would result in themselves being persecuted by the Nazi regime. Approximately 14,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses were deprived of their liberty, many in concentration camps. 1.753 Witnesses were murdered. The “Earnest Bible Students,” as the community identified itself until the 1930s, were not only, as a community and as individuals, persecuted for publically resisting National Socialism’s ideology but also for showing solidarity with and providing help for other persecuted groups. They defied the prevailing anti-Semitism and provided help for their threatened Jewish neighbors. This author has compiled evidence of the religious community´s attitude and gathered moving accounts of many individuals during National Socialism. These stories not only bring to light an unjustly forgotten facet of civil resistance, but they also close a gap in the history of the National Socialist era. Jehovah’s Witnesses supported their Jewish neighbors and friends. They offered persecuted Jews shelter and food, hid them and helped them to escape. For example, the Jehovah´s Witness Franz Gumz and his wife from Berlin were able to hide Inge Deutschkron and her mother for some time from the Gestapo. And the Jewish youth Dagobert Levin went into hiding in a Berlin auto repair shop owned by Jehovah’s Witnesses. 

2:00 PM - 3:45 PM: Panel: A Tale of Two Satellites: Clergy and Antisemitic Persecution in Croatia and Slovakia

• “The Strange Case of Mirko Klein: Jews, the Catholic Church, and the Limits of Christian Rescue in the Independent State of Croatia” with Rory Yeomans, independent scholar
  Yeomans will address the ambiguous role of the Catholic Church in the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust in wartime Croatia using the case of Mirko Klein, a young Jewish boy who was raised as a Catholic and a member of the youth organization of the antisemitic Ustaša movement, to explore the concept of “doubleness” in the attitude of the Catholic Church towards anti-Jewish persecution. It seeks to challenge myths about the Catholic Church which positions itself as either the most loyal collaborator of the Ustaša regime or the virtuous rescuer of Jews.

• “Clerical Petitions to President Jozef Tiso and the Fate of Slovakia’s Jews” with Madeline Vadkerty, independent scholar
  A Roman Catholic priest asks Jozef Tiso why poor Slovaks cannot aryanize Jewish property. A Lutheran pastor sitting in his jail cell justifies issuing false baptism certificates to Jews. What explains their differing attitudes? Independent scholar Madeline Vadkerty will focus on the postures of Slovakia’s Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Greek Catholic denominations in this panel. This topic requires a complex assessment and is especially provocative since Tiso was a Roman Catholic priest in a regime touting Christian values.

4:00 PM - 5:00 PM: 

• “Rescuing Intellectuals: Dietrich von Hildebrand’s Catholic Philosophical Theology against Nazi Zeitgeist, 1922-1938” with Ralph Lentz, senior lecturer in the Department of History at App State
  Paul Stöcklein wrote these lines reflecting on the philosophical education he received from Dietrich von Hildebrand at the University of Munich in the early 1930s during the days of the rising Nazi zeitgeist. The Holocaust originated from a constellation of evil ideas and bad philosophy which were already in the air but which few could recognize at the time—particularly among Germany’s intellectual, academic, and ecclesiastical classes. Von Hildebrand was a rare exception to this. He publicly denounced Nazism as anti-Christian and philosophically deficient as early as 1921, and by 1923, was placed on the Nazi blacklist as a mortal enemy. His Catholic philosophical stance against Nazism and his pedagogical resistance as a professor and later editor of Der Christliche Ständestaat [The Christian Corporative State] in Austria offer the opportunity to consider his attempts to rescue intellectuals from becoming mental and spiritual by-standers, collaborators, or perpetrators long before the Holocaust was actualized. The paper will seek to answer the questions of how Hildebrand acquired the moral acuity to immediately see the antichrist in Nazism when so many other Christian intellectuals could not, and by what specific intellectual means he saved other intellectuals. One thesis the paper will offer is that for both Hildebrand and his listeners, it was his intellectual recourse to the supernatural conception of human beings as images of God against the Nazis’secularized biopolitical anthropology.

5:00 PM - 7:00 PM: Break

7:00 PM - 8:30 PM: Keynote #2

• “Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust — What the Archives Reveal” with Michael Hesemann, independent scholar
  The negative public image of Pope Pius XII, especially regarding his alleged silence and lack of action during the Shoah, is the result of a campaign of fake news, distortions and misrepresentations, beginning with the communist defamation campaign which resulted into Rolf Hochhuths scandalous play “The Deputy” and ending with John Cornwell’s pseudohistorical biography Hitler’s Pope or David Kertzer’s biased and sensationalist The Pope at War. A careful study of thousands of newly discovered documents in the Archives of the Holy See – the Apostolic Archive of the Vatican and the Historical Archive of the 2nd Section of the Secretariat of State – results in a completely different image, which is the topic of this presentation. I spent 16 years of research in the Archives to come to this conclusion, which I can only summarize from my more detailed book, The Pope and the Holocaust (2022). Indeed, Pius XII did protest against the Shoah in diplomatic terms. But more than that, beyond the façade of neutrality, he was involved in a conspiracy to kill Hitler, replied positively to hundreds of Jewish requests for help and tried to stop the deportations of Jews from Hitler’s vassal states with at least forty, often successful, diplomatic interventions. When Hitler ordered the deportation of the Roman Jews, he opened the Vatican and 235 convents and religious houses to hide thousands of them. Indeed, he did more to help the victims.

Questions can be directed to the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies by email at holocaust@appstate.edu or phone at (828) 262-6118.