Tag: Julie Hessler

Praying for Freedom: Catholic Underground Resistance in Soviet Lithuania

Presenter: Claire Phillips (History)

Mentor: Julie Hessler

Oral Presentation

Panel C: “Human Environments” Coquille/Metolius Rooms

Concurrent Session 2: 10:30-11:45am

Facilitator: Matt Nelson

Lithuania, a small, Catholic nation in the Baltic region, has a long history of struggling for independence from greater nation powers. However, never was that struggle greater than during the period of Soviet control over the nation from 1944—1990. At the beginning of Soviet control, Lithuanians attempted to use guerrilla warfare against Soviet power, but were unsuccessful, and they soon switched over to passive resistance instead. An underground journal known as the Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania emerged in the 1970’s as a powerful force of this passive resistance in Lithuania. The journal’s original mission was to call for greater religious freedom for Soviet Lithuania, but the journal later grew to encompass a greater mission of liberating Lithuania. This project analyzes the shifting messages of this important journal, and its role in the greater movement for Lithuanian freedom. In reading the text of the Chronicle and by comparing it to the analysis of Lithuanian and Soviet scholars, it is clear that the Chronicle played a pivotal role in the Lithuanian national movement of the 1970’s and 1980’s. The journal unified religious and non-religious Lithuanians in resistance against Soviet power, and kept the flame of resistance alive in a period when active resistance was dangerous and nearly impossible. Though the Chronicle was not explicitly involved in the liberation of Lithuania from the Soviet Union in 1990, it played a large role in ensuring the survival of dissent and resistance in the nation.

Legality, Memory, and Monstrosity: An Examination of International Postwar Justice Systems and the Trials of John Demjanjuk

Presenter: Claire Aubin

Faculty Mentor: Julie Hessler

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: International Studies/Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Funding Source: Research Seminar Participant, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Travel and accommodation expenses & $250 stipend;
UROP Mini-grant, UO Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, $1000

In the 1980s, John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian immigrant living in suburban Ohio who had been accused of a singularly horrific type of Holocaust perpetration, became the accidental poster child for international legal battles. He would face multiple deportations, be subjected to two lengthy trials for two different sets of war crimes committed by two different people, and ultimately die in Germany without a completed appeals process or criminal record. Though Demjanjuk’s relationship to the Holocaust has been the subject of much debate, there has not been enough discussion of the ways his trials reveal the abilities of international bodies to serve as arbiters of justice. Demjanjuk’s case calls into question the efficacy of both domestic and international legal systems, most especially their relationships with war crimes investigative processes and the politics of postwar justice. The influence of history, memory, and political goals on the legal system as it relates to late-period Holocaust trials is enormous, and this project explores how that influence can be seen throughout the Demjanjuk trials. The failures and successes of the trials are exemplary of the postwar international legal system in almost all ways, particularly as that legal system has attempted to provide redemption for survivors of genocide. Archival documents, interviews with original trial investigators, and trial transcripts are used to provide social, political, and historical context for the case. This project is also the basis of a more in-depth undergraduate departmental honors thesis.

Russia’s Experiment in Scouting: 1909-1922 

Presenter(s): John Dechert − Mathematics, Reees

Faculty Mentor(s): Julie Hessler

Oral Session 3SW

Research Area: History

In 1909, Oleg Ivanovich Pantyukhoff, a colonel in the Russian army who was inspired by Robert Baden-Powell’s scouting program in Great Britain, founded the Russian wing of the worldwide scouting movement, known as the “Razvyedchiki” in Russian, and would lead the program to great successes within pre-revolutionary Russian society. Pantyukhoff and many of his scouts left memoirs of their involvement with the scouting movement, which provide a unique and personal perspective into the dealings of the movement. Additionally, Soviet leaders spoke of the scouting movement, and its counter-revolutionary flavor, frequently, and provide another interesting perspective into the movement’s history. Scouting, however, was not
an activity born in isolation. During the late 19th and early 20th century, Russia underwent a fundamental shift in policies and priorities as a result of modernization, liberalism, and nationalism, and the Russian people bought wholesale into the trappings of “civil society.” They formed men’s and women’s groups, charity organizations, book clubs, literary societies, and the like. The study of Russian civil society before the World War I has been of growing interest to Russian historians since the fall of the Soviet Union, and studies of pre-war organizations are ever rising in number. Unfortunately, the Russian scouting movement has been left out of this general trend. The purpose of this study is to bridge that gap and contribute to the body of knowledge by examining the course of Russian scouting during the turbulent years of World War I, the Russian Revolution and Civil War, and how the scouting movement fit in to Russian civil society.

The World War II Correspondence of Billy and Bonnie Amend

Presenter(s): Will Curtis − History

Faculty Mentor(s): Alexander Dracobly, Julie Hessler

Poster 119

Research Area: History

For just short of three years, from June 1942 to August 1945, my great-grandparents, newlyweds Billy and Bonnie Amend, did not see each other or hear one another’s voice. Billy was a Major in the 190th Field Artillery, stationed in England until the Allied invasion of Western Europe on June 6, 1944. During the years he was gone, the Amends communicated exclusively through letters. They each wrote almost one a day for the duration of the war. My thesis examines just one year of this correspondence, 1944, during which Billy saw some of the most violent combat of the war, including the Battle of the Bulge. Meanwhile, Bonnie was left to struggle through daily life and care for my grandmother back home in Hugo, Oklahoma. Through examination and careful reading of just over one thousand pages of their original letters, my thesis evaluates how the Amends persisted through World War II and how the letters they exchanged helped them to do so. Primarily, the letters served to maintain the bond between Billy and Bonnie. While they spent ink discussing the war itself, the letters are largely dedicated to summaries of day-to-day life, and expressions of each other’s desire to finally be together again. However far apart they were and however much danger Bonnie imagined Billy to be in, the letters they wrote back and forth seemed to lessen their separation, and mitigate some of that danger. Though my thesis only examines the correspondence of Billy and Bonnie, their experience was one had by millions of Americans during the war. They provide a direct account of was on the minds of families separated by the deadliest war the world has ever known, and detail just how they were able to come out on the other side.