Research and Teaching
The long-term plan was for German-occupied Poland to provide new »living space« for the Germans. While a brutal policy of Germanization and settlement was immediately implemented in the annexed occupied Polish territories, the other occupied Polish territories were initially merely the subject of a radicalizing settlement utopia. This changed in November 1942, when Heinrich Himmler selected the Zamość region for a large-scale »pilot project« of Germanization policy. After the end of the Holocaust in this region—a prerequisite for the settlement policy—the local population was to be resettled and ethnic Germans settled in their place. The implementation failed, but it had far-reaching consequences for German occupation rule in the General Government.
Drawing on a broad empirical basis, this project examines the planning and execution of »Aktion Zamość« in the context of the Holocaust, German occupation rule in Poland, and Nazi settlement utopias. Why did it take place there? Why at that particular time? Who were the key actors, and how did they proceed? What goals did the various actors pursue? In answering these and other questions, particular emphasis is placed on the perspectives and interpretations of the people affected—those of the local non-Jewish population, the displaced men, women, and children, the Jews who may have been living in hiding in the region, and the ethnic German settlers.
