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Dear Max Weber Stiftung – Georgia Branch Office friends,It’s our pleasure to invite you to our next lecture by The lecture by Esther Meier (Max Weber Network Eastern Europe), Tetiana Pastushenko (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) and David Jishkariani (Max Weber Stiftung Georgia Branch Office) titled "Soviet Prisoners of War in World War II: Contested Memories in Georgia and Ukraine" on November 6, 2025.
About the lecture:
During World War II, up to 5.7 million Soviet soldiers and officers were taken prisoner by the Wehrmacht. More than three million of them died due to inhumane captivity conditions or were murdered. The German treatment of Soviet POWs is one of the largest crimes of the Second World War. Those who survived the German camps were examined by the Soviet Security Services and often socially stigmatized.
The fates of the dead and the survivors remains a sensitive issue in Georgia, Ukraine, and Germany to this day. The lecture presents individual biographies of POWs and discusses how they are remembered. Whereas Western scholarship has often generalized the history of Georgian and Ukrainian POWs as part of a broader Soviet experience or even viewed all Soviet POWs as “Russians”, the Georgian and Ukrainian cultures of remembrance faced several challenges, particularly in distancing itself from Soviet interpretations of the past.
▪️ Esther Meier, Ph.D., is the Scientific Coordinator of the project “Soviet and German Prisoners of War and Internees” at the Max Weber Network Eastern Europe.
▪️ Tetiana Pastushenko, Ph.D., is Senior Research Associate at the Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv), and Pause Program fellow at CERCEC (Paris).
▪️ David Jishkariani is Researcher at the Max Weber Stiftung – Georgia Branch Office
Working language:
English without interpretation
=> Please, start your registration for the event via following link: https://forms.office.com/e/TccxYbaNvJ?origin=lprLink
Please note, registration is open until November 4, 2025!
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Rustaveli Avenue 20, 0108 Tbilisi, Georgia, შოთა რუსთაველის გამზირი 20, თბილისი, საქართველო, Tbilisi, Georgia
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