Every January 27, Auschwitz Museum hosts a massive commemoration of the liberation of the German camp. World leaders come to give speeches and survivors (some wearing camp uniforms) speak to the public about their experiences. This year, fewer than thirty survivors were able to come, a sign that the generation of survivors will soon disappear. But does that mean that the era of Holocaust memory and Holocaust history is also coming to an end? This is where my conversation with

I spent about two weeks in Ljubljana, working with colleagues at the Institute of Contemporary History (INZ) there on a new project. As part of my stay, I was obliged to give a lecture on my research. This presentation uses the perspectives of trust and the social meaning of money to understand the introduction of the Polish złoty in 1924. As the latest scholarship has shown, currency valuation is not a function of monetary factors (balance of trade, reserves, money supply),

One of the fascinating questions that irked me while I was working on my dissertation was how dictators justified their rule. In the case of Poland, but not just Poland, the authoritarians who took power after the 1926 coup d'etat were obsessed with legality, or at least the appearance of legality. You might say then that they were also obsessed with appearing legitimate. Despite the obviously criminal act of overthrowing the government, everything they did was according to t