Mr. Jochen Böhler

Professional Background

Mr. Jochen Böhler received an M.A. in medieval and contemporary history at the University of Cologne in Germany. During his fellowship at the Museum, he was a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Cologne and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the German Historical Institute (GHI) in Warsaw, Poland. For his Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship for Archival Research, Mr. Böhler conducted research on “Einsatzgruppen in Poland in 1939.”

At the time of his fellowship, Mr. Böhler served as Scholarly Advisor to Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, guiding an exhibition which documented German Wehrmacht crimes in Poland in 1939. Along with the Cologne City Museum, NS Documentation Center of Cologne, and the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, he worked on a traveling exhibition that also addressed the crimes of the German army in Poland during the Holocaust. Mr. Böhler researched “Dawn of the War of Extermination: The Wehrmacht in Poland in 1939” for his fellowship at the German Historical Institute. He has lectured on is research in both Germany and Poland. In addition to being a native speaker of German, Mr. Böhler is fluent in English, Polish, French, and Spanish.

Fellowship Research

During his tenure at the Museum, Mr. Böhler conducted research on “Einsatzgruppen in Poland in 1939.” He drew upon the Museum’s rich collection of eyewitness testimonies to closely study the Einsatzgruppen in Poland within the first few weeks of the war. Mr. Böhler also used Yizkor and other rare memorial books in order to carefully analyze the victims’ perceptions of the Einsatzgruppen as events unfolded.

Mr. Böhler was in residence at the Mandel Center from July 1 to August 30, 2004.