Participants

 

 

Tanja Vaitulevich

Tanja Vaitulevich worked as a project coordinator of the “International Youth Center” at the Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Centre in Berlin-Schöneweide. Her main task was to organize international educational projects on NS-forced labor. In her PhD she has dealt with the repatriation and return of former forced laborers to post-war Netherlands and Belarus. She initiated the German-South Korean seminar for educators in cooperation with the Sogang University in order to provide a platform for educators from Germany and South Korea to learn more about the topic of forced labour in a historical context and exchange ideas on methods and teaching practices from a transnational perspective.

 

Prof. Jie-Hyun Lim

Prof. Jie-Hyun Lim is a global historian and founding director of the Critical Global Studies Institute at Sogang University in Seoul. Among several other professional activities, he is the president of the Network of Global and World History Organizations, a board member of Toynbee Prize Foundation and the international scientific committee for the International Conference of Labor and Social History. He is also a member of several international research networks such as the Transnational Memory Project. His recent research foci are memory studies and public history. His forthcoming book of Victimhood Nationalism represents his present interest. As he finds the memory space in Asia full of problems, he values seminars for educators like the German-South Korean seminar on forced labor. He thinks that it is important that academia and memory activists from other fields like education and civic organization engage in a public discourse in order to transform the memory landscape. Prof. Jie-Hyun Lim highlighted the importance of going beyond the boundaries of nation states and overcoming ego-centric narratives in collective memories.

 

Ingrid Bettwieser

Ingrid Bettwieser holds a Master of Education degree from the Free University in Berlin. Her fields of study were history, German literature, and educational science. She is currently working as an educator in the memorial of the former concentration camp Sachsenhausen. Her special interests are  the memory of SS-camps, masculinity and sexuality during imprisonment, and marginalized victim groups. She participated in the first part of the German-South Korean seminar and gave a presentation on forced forced sex work in concentration camps.

 

Hee Yun Cheong

Hee Yun Cheong is a graduate student of history at Sogang University and works for the Critical Global Studies Institute. His study and research foci are on memory studies and the role of civic initiatives in memory politics in particular. He completed his Bachlor’s degree in history at the same university and wrote a thesis on the restitution of colonial bones and „homecoming nationalism“. He critically investigated a bilateral project of exhumations of former forced laborers from South Korea who were forced to work in Hokkaido, Japan,  between 1939-1945. This research project was closely linked to his private activism during the exhumation and restitution of these bones. Furthermore, he supports the civic organization Stepping Stones for Peace, which initiated establishing stepping stones for Korean forced labor victims in South Korea as well as in Japan. Hee Yun Cheong is interested in this German-South Korean seminar because he finds transnational approaches in research as well as education very fruitful. These approaches help to overcome nationalistic narratives in historiography and highlight global entanglements.

 

Sandra Franz

Sandra Franz currently finishes her graduate studies in literature and arts at Oxford University, UK. She was an academic and educational guide at the Düsseldorf Memorial Centre and a lecturer at the Heinrich-Heine University. Among other things, her research interests are Jewish history and the Holocaust; one of her projects at the memorial center was the conceptualization of a comprehensive anti-semitism project.  She is simultaneously working on a PhD project about the British occupation zone after the Second World War in Germany.

 

Intaek Hong

Intaek Hong is a  graduate student of history at Sogang university and works for the Critical Global Studies Institute. He successfully finished his Bachlor’s degree in history at Carleton College in Minnesota, USA. His main period of interest is the Cold War and he did research projects on North Korean orphans that were educated in Eastern European Communist countries in the 1950s. He investigated their memory through letters sent to former teachers in Poland and Romania. He also worked as a research fellow at North Korea International Documentation Project (NKIDP) the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC on related topics. Furthermore, Intaek Hong is a private tutor for global history and SAT exam preparation.  He is particularly interested in the transnational perspective on forced labor in this German-South Korean seminar.

 

Anja Kruse

Anja Kruse studied Sociology and communication studies. Since 2014 she is pedagogical assistant at the Nazi Forced Labor Memorial Leipzig and responsible for educational projects and programmes, its conceptualization, implementation and – if necessary – fundraising. In her educational work, she emphasize that Nazi crimes took place in the midst of society. Using the example of forced labor as a public, everyday and omnipresent Nazi crime she wants to encourage discussions about local history and about each individual social responsibility in past and present times.  Anja finds this seminar highly interesting because it opens up another context of forced labor and thus enables another perspective on the own work. This broadened perspectives help to break up Eurocentric narratives, which in return influences own pedagogical work.

 

Aeri Kim

Aeri Kim is a graduate student of history at Sogang University. She participated in the first part of the seminar in Berlin and gave a presentation on “A Museum Study of Forced Laborers in South Korea”. She presented different museums and memorial sites in South Korea and highlighted their narratives and political agendas in memory politics.

 

Hyun-Gyung Kim

Hyun-Gyung Kim studied Politics and International Relations at Yonsei University and received PhD in Women’s studies at Ewha Womans University. She published several research articles about media industry,  creative labor and gender. As a member of alternative documentary making group in Seoul, she also produced several documentary films. Those dealt making Korean middle class family and house poor, the gender/queer politics of all female performance in 1950’s and the lives of sex workers in Itaewon area.  She participated in this project because she is interested in the politics of representation on ‘Comfort Women’. With workshop participation experience, she wrote an essay titled ‘2016 Berlin-Seoul : Note on Facism, Women and Proper Noun’ in magazine <Words and Bow> 12. She used to be postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Communications, Kwang Woon University and research fellow at Korean Women’s Institute, Ewha Womans University. Currently, she is postdoctoral research fellow at Graduate School of East Asian Studies(GEAS), Free University in Berlin.

 

Ki-Jun Kwon

Ki-Jun Kwon is a graduate student of history at Sogang university and works for the Critical Global Studies Institute. He successfully completed his undergraduate studies in history and sociology at the same university. His main research and study interests are museum studies and public history. He is particularly interested how museums and exhibition represent victimhood and how this topic is perceived by visitors. These interests are closely linked to his practical experience in a museum and his goal of becoming an exhibition maker in a museum in the future. He enjoys a practical outreach of seminars at university, which is why he was very interested in this seminar on forced labor as a transnational phenomenon. He liked the field work and actively engaging in the public discourse when doing a workshop with high school students or when talking to staff of museums or activists.

 

Kyudong Lee

Kyudong Lee did a Bachlor’s degree in economics at Sogang university and now is a graduate student of history at the same university.  He also works for the Critical Global Studies Institute. His main research and study interests are World War II on the Asian-Pacific site and victimhood nationalism. He has intensively dealt with memories of Japanese internees in American camps. He is interested in this seminar as it opens up a wider global perspective on the Second World War to him. He finds the transnational perspective very enlightening and pointed out that this perspective enabled critical discussions on the dominant national narratives in public history and memory.

 

Woo Jong Lee

Woo Jong Lee is a high school teacher and participated in the first part of the German-South Korean seminar for educators. In Berlin he gave a presentation on his teaching experience of the topic forced labor. The title of his presentation was “Transnational perception of South Korean high schoolers on the issue of Forced labor in WW2” and he presented an empirical analysis of his teaching projects. He exemplifies the transnational scale of forced labor in his teachings by referring to automobile brands such as Mitzubischi or Mercedes Benz and BMW, which all made use of forced laborers but nowadays have a good reputation. Thereby he highlights that such companies have a past few people know of.

 

 

Verena Meier

Verena Meier studies History, English, European Art History and Philosophy at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg to become a high school teacher. She wrote her final thesis on “We are the Masters, You are the Slaves”- the Economic Exploitation Policy in the Employment of Soviet Prisoners of War as Forced Laborers in the Pulverfabrik Liebenau”. She is a member of several civic initiatives related to forced labor (Dokumentationsstelle Pulverfabrik Liebenau, KZ-Gedenkstätte Porta Westfalica, Heidelberger Lupe) and assists at the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma with creating a new travelling exhibition. Currently, she is doing a research project on the history of a camp for Soviet POWs in Gudendorf. Verena Meier is interested in this seminar because it deals with forced labor from a transnational perspective and because of its  strong focus on memory and public history.

 

Paula Oppermann

Paula Oppermann studied history and Baltic languages at Greifswald University for her BA and finished her MA in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Uppsala University. She did internships at the Museum of Occupation of Latvia in Riga and at the Wiener Library in London, and volunteered at the Holocaust Centre in Moscow. Paula Oppermann has a strong focus on the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe in her research. In her current position as a PhD student at the University of Glasgow she investigates the collaboration of Latvian and Lithuanian collaborators in Nazi crimes. Before this she worked at the Topography of Terror Documentation Centre in Berlin as one of the curators of the special exhibition “Mass Shootings. The Holocaust between the Baltic and the Black Sea 1941-1944”. Paula Oppermann is particularly interested in this German-South Korean seminar on forced labor because the transnational perspectives helps to overcome Eurocentric views.

 

Mareike Otters

Mareike Otters is currently working at the memorial Oberhausen. This memorial exhibits the city’s history during the Nazi regime and has a strong focus on Forced Labor in the coal industries in the Ruhr area. Mareike Otters finished her Master’s degree in history and art history at the Free University in Berlin and wrote her Master thesis on the topic of the visual representation of Soviet prisoners of war in Germany.  She is interested in this seminar because she wanted to learn more about the history of forced labor in Southeast Asia during World War II. She is especially interested in the transnational dimensions of memory in history education and political activism.

 

Beom Chul Park

Beom Chul Park is a high school teacher and has taught for twelve years at the Kyungmoon High School. He teaches Korean history, Western history, and Eastern history. His special interests are the history and memory of comfort women. This year he is planning on erecting a comfort woman statue at his school with his students. He has been a memory activist for many years and enjoyed that he got the chance to participate in this seminar, as it broadens his horizon. When teaching the Second World War, he mainly focuses on the Asian-Pacific area. After this seminar he would like to make it more global and also include Europe and the issue of forced labor in his teachings on this topic. Beom Chul Park is interested in this international exchange because he feels that there is a necessity to expand his horizon. Engaging with educators from Germany made him aware of the global scale of issues like forced labor. He now wants include transnational perspectives in his teachings.

 

Rebekka Schubert

Rebekka Schubert studied at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena. She works at the Topf & Sons – Builders of the Auschwitz Ovens. Place of Remembrance in Erfurt. J. A. Topf & Sons was the company which supplied seven concentration camps with incineration ovens and for the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau it built the ventilation systems for gas chambers. With the beginning of World War II Topf & Sons replaced the employees served in the German army with 600 forced labourers from all occupied countries. Some even were being forced to work in the production of incinerators or spare parts for aircrafts for the German army. As the educator in this Place of Remembrance Rebekka Schubert is responsible for all pedagogical programs. When teaching groups about the history of the company she always tries to highlight the contemporary relevance. Rebekka Schubert is particularly interested in this seminar because it is a great opportunity for getting more information about forced labour during WWII and learning about new research and teaching methods with an international perspective and also exchanging ideas for projects. Beside this the topic of forced labour provides many ways for thinking about work in society.

 

 

Participants with activists from 선감역사박물관-sungam history museum