October 2019 - May 2020
email g.grinchenko(at)karazin(dot)ua
Gelinada Grinchenko is a Professor of History at the Department of Ukrainian Studies (Faculty of Philosophy, V. N. Karazin National University, Kharkiv,Ukraine), Editor-in- Chief of the Ukrainian based academic peer-reviewed journal Ukraina Moderna, Head of the Ukrainian Oral History Association, Member of German-Ukrainian Historical Commission. She was Visiting International Professor at Ruhr University Research School PLUS, Bochum, Germany (2015-2016), Guest Professor at Justus Liebeg University Giessen, Germany (2019), since 2019, she has been a Honorary Research Associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Brandeis University, USA.
Her main areas of interest are oral history, the history and memory of WWII, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Memory Studies. She has edited several books and journals, and published many chapters and peer-reviewed articles on these issues. Her latest edited volume is Traitors, Collaborators, and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory: Formulas of Betrayal, ed. by G. Grinchenko and E. Narvselius (Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, 2018), 422 pp.
Recent historiographyhas only started to investigate the practices of extermination of mentally ill patients and discourses of the recollections of these crimes after the war. There are now a several pioneering articles and book chapters dedicated to mentally ill under Nazi occupation in Europe and murder of psychiatric patients, among them only one with general overview on Ukraine. We still know very little about the psychiatric genocide in Eastern European lands. Scholars based in Eastern Europe are just at the beginning of deep and detailed study of above-mentioned problem from political, social and legal perspectives, and of inscribing these perspectives into broader academic and memorial contexts as well.
The main idea behind the project is to study the history and memory of the Nazi extermination of the patients of Ukraine’s psychiatric hospitals in context of Nazi psychiatric genocide in Eastern Europe. This research will be conducted in the framework of studying the general history of medical institutions with a psychiatric profile, which existed on the territory of occupied Ukraine, as well as the policies of the Soviet and German occupation authorities in relation to these institutions.
Of particular interest is also the study of the trials of war crimes and crimes against humanity, in our case those, which took place in Soviet Ukraine and both German Republics. Separate attention will be paid to the memory and collective notions about these Nazi crimes in the occupied territories, mostly to the monuments, popular literature, films and so-called public opinion. In order to connect this two points, with the help of Memory Studies methodology it’s proposed to look on trials against Nazis and their collaborators as to the public and memory events, where legal and media actors, witnesses and memory communities took part in the construction and shaping of WWII memory and narratives.
Finally, the place of the topic of psychiatric patients extermination within the dynamics of the reception of the Holocaust in Ukrainian memory culture from 1991 to 2018 as a part of all-European post-Cold war transformations will be specified.
Oral history
The history and memory of WWII
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Memory Studies
Usna istoriia prymusu do pratsi: metod, konteksty, teksty [Oral History of Forced Labor: Method, Contexts, Texts; in Ukrainian] (Kharkiv: NTMT, 2012), 304 pp.
Mizh vyzvolenniam і vyznanniam: prymusova pratsia v natsystsʹkii Nimechchyni v politychnii pam’iati SRSR і FRN chasiv “kholodonoї viiny” [Between Liberation and Recognition: Forced Labor in Nazi German in the Political Memory of the USSR and the FRG during the Period of the “Cold War”; in Ukrainian] (Kharkiv: NTMT, 2010), 336 pp.
Traitors, Collaborators, and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory: Formulas of Betrayal, ed. by G. Grinchenko and E. Narvselius (Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, 2018), 422 pp.
Reclaiming the Personal: Oral History in Post-Socialist Europe, ed. by N. Khanenko-Friesen and G. Grinchenko (University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2015), 344 pp.
Zhinky tsentral'noyi ta skhidnoyi Ievropy u Druhiy svitoviy viyni: henderna spetsyfika dosvidu v chasy ekstremal'noho nasyl'stva: Zb[irnyk] nauk[ovykh] st[atei] [Central and East European Women and the Second World War: Gendered Experience in a Time of Extreme Violence; in Ukrainian], ed. Gelinada Grinchenko, Kateryna Kobchenko, Oksana Kis (Kyiv: ART-KNYHA, 2015), 335 pp.
U poshukakh vlasnoho holosu: Usna istoriia iak teoriia, metod ta dzherelo; Zb[irnyk] nauk[ovykh] st[atei] [In Search of Voice: Oral History as Theory, Method, and Source; Collection of Scholarly Articles; in Ukrainian], ed. G. Grinchenko and N. Khanenko-Friesen (Kharkiv: PP TORHSIN PLIUS, 2010), 248 pp.
“Proshu vas mene ne zabuvaty ”: usni istoriї ukraїnsʹkykh ostarbaiteriv [“I Ask You Not to Forget Me”: Oral Histories of Ukrainian Ostarbeiters; in Ukrainian], ed. G. Grinchenko (Kharkiv: Pravo, 2009), 208 pp.
Spohady-terni: Pro moie zhyttia nimetsʹke…: spohady pro perebuvannia na prymusovykh robotakh u natsystsʹkii Nimechchyni [Thorny Memories: About My German Life…: Memoirs of My Forced Labor Experience in Nazi Germany; in Ukrainian], ed. and Introduction by G. G. Grinchenko, comp. I. Ie. Rebrova (Kharkiv: Pravo, 2008), 448 pp.
[co-authored with Eleonora Narvselius,] “Introduction: “Formulas of Betrayal” – Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory,” in Traitors, Collaborators, and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory: Formulas of Betrayal, ed. by G. Grinchenko and E. Narvselius (Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, 2018), 1-27.
[co-authored with Eleonora Narvselius,] “Silken Braids Under the German Boot: Creating Images of Female Soviet Ostarbeiters as Betrayers and Betrayed,” in Traitors, Collaborators, and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory: Formulas of Betrayal, ed. by G. Grinchenko and E. Narvselius (Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, 2018), 311-336.
“Ostarbeiters of the Third Reich in Ukrainian and European Public Discourses: Restitution, Recognition, Commemoration,” in War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, ed. by Julie Fedor, Markku Kangaspuro, Jussi Lassila, Tatiana Zhurzhenko (Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, 2017), 281-304.
“Forced Labour in Nazi Germany in the Interviews of Former Child Ostarbeiters,“ in Reclaiming the Personal: Oral History in Post-Socialist Europe, ed. N. Khanenko-Friesen and G. Grinchenko (University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2015), 176–204.
[co-authored by Natalia Khanenko-Friesen,] “Introduction. Reclaiming the Personal: Oral History in Post-Socialist Europe,“ in Reclaiming the Personal: Oral History in Post-Socialist Europe, ed. N. Khanenko-Friesen and G. Grinchenko (University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2015), 3–18.
“‘And now imagine her or him as a slave, a pitiful slave with no rights’: child forced labourers in the culture of remembrance of the USSR and post-Soviet Ukraine,” European Review of History: Revue europeenne d'histoire, vol. 22, issue 2 (2015): 389–410.
“The Ostarbeiter of Nazi Germany in Soviet and Post-Soviet Ukrainian Historical Memory,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 54, nos. 3–4 (September–December) 2012: 401–26.
The full list of publication can be found here