Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe

Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe (born 1979 in Zabrze, Poland as Grzegorz Rossoliński)^[1] is a German–Polish historian based in Berlin, associated with the Friedrich Meinecke Institute of the Free University of Berlin. He specializes in the history of the Holocaust and East-Central Europe, fascism, nationalism, the history of antisemitism, the history of the Soviet Union, and the politics of memory.^[2]

Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe in 2012
Born	1979 (age 45–46) Zabrze, Poland
Nationality	German-Polish
Education	European University Viadrina, University of Hamburg
Occupation	Historian
Known for	study of Nationalism, World War II, Holocaust, Fascism, Eastern Europe

Career

Rossoliński-Liebe studied cultural history and East European history at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) from 1999 to 2005. He worked on his doctoral dissertation about Stepan Bandera and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists at the University of Alberta and the University of Hamburg from 2007, and defended his PhD at the University of Hamburg in June 2012.^[3][4] Between 2012 and 2014, he worked on a post-doctoral project at the Free University of Berlin on the Ukrainian diasporic memory of the Holocaust.^[3] He also worked as a research assistant at the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies.^[5] He is the author of Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist. Fascism, Genocide, and Cult,^[6] a scholarly biography of Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, and an in-depth study of his political cult.^[6] From 2014 to 2018, Rossoliński-Liebe investigated the German-Polish collaboration in World War II. During this time, he was a Saul Kagan Fellow of the Claims Conference^[7] and a fellow of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, the German Historical Institute Warsaw and the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research.^[8][9]

Political reactions

Rossoliński-Liebe was invited in late February and early March 2012 by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the German embassy in Kyiv, to deliver six lectures about Bandera in three Ukrainian cities. The lectures were scheduled to take place in February and March 2012 in Lviv, Dnipro and Kyiv. The organizers, however, were unable to find a suitable venue in Lviv, and also, three of the four lectures in Dnipro and Kyiv were canceled a few hours prior to the event.^[10]

The only lecture took place in the German embassy in Kyiv, under the protection of police.^[11] In front of the building, approximately one hundred protesters, including members of the radical-right Svoboda party, tried to convince a few hundred interested students, scholars, and ordinary Ukrainians not to attend the presentation, claiming that Rossoliński-Liebe was "Joseph Goebbels' grandchild" and a "liberal fascist from Berlin."^[12][13] In response to the harassment and threats made towards him during his lecture trip in Ukraine, the online petition "For Freedom of Speech and Expression in Ukraine" was signed by 97 persons, including scholar Delphine Bechtel.^[14]

Publications

Books and Papers

• Polnische Bürgermeister und der Holocaust. Besatzung, Verwaltung und Kollaboration [Polish Mayors and the Holocaust. Occupation, Administration and Collaboration] (in German). Oldenbourg: De Gruyter. 2024. doi:10.1515/9783110750065. ISBN 978-3-11-074897-0.
• Faszystowski trzon radykalnego nacjonalizmu ukraińskiego [Fascist core of radical Ukrainian nationalism] (in Polish). Warsaw: Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów. 2020. ISBN 978-83-954339-0-0.
• Der polnisch-ukrainische Konflikt im Historikerdiskurs: Perspektiven, Interpretationen und Aufarbeitung. Wien: New Academic Press, 2017, ISBN 978-3-7003-1988-7.
• The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism. The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies. Vol. 2402. Pittsburgh: The Center for Russian and East European Studies. 2015. doi:10.5195/cbp.2015.204.
• Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist. Fascism, Genocide, and Cult. Stuttgart: Ibidem Press: Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-8382-0604-2. (Reviewed by Delphine Bechtel^[15])

Books edited

• With Arnd Bauerkämper: Fascism without Borders. Transnational Connections and Cooperation between Movements and Regimes in Europe 1918 to 1945. Oxford: Berghahn 2017, ISBN 978-1-78533-468-9.
• With Regina Fritz und Jana Starek: Alma mater antisemitica. Akademisches Milieu, Juden und Antisemitismus an den Universitäten Europas zwischen 1918 und 1939. Wien: New Academic Press, 2016, ISBN 978-3-7003-1922-1.

Articles

• "Collaboration, Complexity, and 'Integrated History': Jewish and German Historiographical Representations of Non-German Perpetrators during the Holocaust". Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry. 37. 2025. doi:10.3828/polin.2025.37.33.
• "The Genocidal Violence of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army". In: Jacob, Frank; Todzi, Kim Sebastian, eds. (2023 (eds.): Genocidal Violence: Concepts, Forms, Impact. Oldenbourgh: De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110781328-009. ISBN 978-3-11-078070-3.
• "Bandera, Genocide, and Justice: Was Stepan Bandera Responsible for Crimes Committed by the OUN and the UPA?". Yad Vashem Studies. 51 (1): 89–117. 2023.
• "Putin s Abuse of History: Ukrainian Nazis Genocide and a Fake Threat Scenario". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 35 (1): 1–10. 2023. doi:10.1080/13518046.2022.2058179.
• "Ukrainian Nationalists and the Jews during the Holocaust in the Eyes of Anticommunist, Soviet, German, Jewish, Polish, and Ukrainian Historians: Transnational History and National Interpretations". Moreshet. 19. 2022.
• "Survivor Testimonies and the Coming to Terms with the Holocaust in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia: The Case of the Ukrainian Nationalists". East European Politics and Societies and Cultures. 43: 221–240. 2020. doi:10.1177/088832541983.
• "Kollaboration im Zweiten Weltkrieg und im Holocaust – Ein analytisches Konzept" [Collaboration in the Second World War and the Holocaust – An analytical concept]. Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte (in German). 2020. doi:10.14765/zzf.dok-1817.
• "Der europäische Faschismus und der ukrainische Nationalismus. Verflechtungen, Annäherungen und Wechselbeziehungen" [European Fascism and Ukrainian Nationalism: Interconnections, Convergences, and Interdependencies]. Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft (in German). 65 (2): 153–169. 2017.
• "Ukraińska policja, nacjonalizm i zagłada Żydów w Galicji Wschodniej i na Wołyniu" [Ukrainian police, nationalism and the extermination of Jews in Eastern Galicia and Volhynia]. Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały (in Polish) (13): 57–79. 2017. doi:10.32927/ZZSiM.350.
• "Holocaust Amnesia: The Ukrainian Diaspora and the Genocide of the Jews". German Yearbook of Contemporary History. 1: 107–144. 2016. doi:10.1353/gych.2016.0006.
• "Remembering and Forgetting the Past: Jewish and Ukrainian Memories of the Holocaust in western Ukraine". Yad Vashem Studies. 43 (2): 13–50. 2015.
• "Erinnerungslücke Holocaust. Die ukrainische Diaspora und der Genozid an den Juden" [Holocaust memory gap. The Ukrainian diaspora and the genocide of the Jews]. Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (in German). 62 (2): 397–430. 2014.
• "Der Verlauf und die Täter des Lemberger Pogroms vom Sommer 1941. Zum aktuellen Stand der Forschung" [The course of events and the perpetrators of the Lviv pogrom of the summer of 1941. The current state of research]. Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung (in German). 22: 207–243. 2013.
• "Debating, Obfuscating and Disciplining the Holocaust: Post-Soviet Historical Discourses on the OUN-UPA and other Nationalist Movements". East European Jewish Affairs. 42 (3): 199–241. 2012..
• "The 'Ukrainian National Revolution' of 1941. Discourse and Practice of a Fascist Movement". Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 12 (1): 83–114. 2011.
• "Celebrating Fascism and War Criminality in Edmonton. The Political Myth and Cult of Stepan Bandera in Multicultural Canada". Kakanien Revisited. 12: 1–16. 2010.
• "Der polnisch-ukrainische Historikerdiskurs über den polnisch-ukrainischen Konflikt 1943–1947" [The Polish-Ukrainian Historical Discourse on the Polish-Ukrainian Conflict 1943–1947]. Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas (in German). 57: 54–85. 2009.
• "Die Stadt Lemberg in den Schichten ihrer politischen Denkmäler,No. 6, Lviv". ece-urban. 6. Center for Urban History of East Central Europe. 2009.
• Vogenbeck, Bernd, ed. (2008). "Umbenennungen in der Ziemia Lubuska nach 1945" [Renaming in Ziemia Lubuska after 1945]. Terra Transoderana: zwischen Neumark und Ziemia Lubuska (in German). Berlin: be.bra: 59–68. ISBN 978-3-937233-50-5.
• "Der Raum der Stadt Lemberg in den Schichten seiner politischen Denkmäler" [The space of the city of Lviv in the layers of its political monuments]. Kakanien Revisited (in German). 12: 1–21. 2009.
• Henke, Lutz; Rossoliński, Grzegorz; Ther, Philipp, eds. (2007). "Bandera und Nikifor – zwei Modernen in einer Stadt. Die 'nationalbürgerliche' und die 'weltbürgerliche' Moderne in Lemberg" [Bandera and Nikifor – two modernists in one city. The 'national-bourgeois' and the 'cosmopolitan' modernism in Lviv]. Eine neue Gesellschaft in einer alten Stadt (in German). Warsaw: ATUT: 109–124.