Underground Information, Unofficial News, Useful Rumors: Informal Communication in World War II Europe (INFOCOM workshop)

Second Workshop of the Leibniz Junior Research Group Project “‘Man hört, man spricht’:
Informal Communication and Information ‘From Below’ in Nazi Europe” (INFOCOM)
at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) – Munich, in cooperation with the
Central European University (CEU) Department of History and Pasts, Inc. Center for
Historical Studies.

Organizers: Marsha Siefert, Mónika Nagy, Ágoston Berecz (CEU and Pasts, Inc.); Caroline Mezger, Izabela Paszko (IfZ)

Wednesday, September 8, 2021
12:30–13:00 Arrivals at CEU, registration
13:00–13:15 Welcome by Marsha Siefert, Caroline Mezger
13:15–14:30 Introduction to INFOCOM Project, Discussion of Theoretical Framework/INFOCOM Paper (INFOCOM Team – Caroline Mezger, Felix Berge, Manuel Mork, Izabela Paszko)
14:30–14:45 Coffee Break
14:45–17:00 Panel I – Informal Communication in Nazi Europe: Case Studies
• Felix Berge: “Hearing and Speaking in War: Practices of Informal
Communication in the National Socialist Majority Society, 1939–
1945”
• Manuel Mork: “An Occupied Public: German Informational Politics,
Popular Narratives, and the Public Perception of the Occupier in
French Wartime Society (1940–44)”
• Izabela Paszko: “Information more valuable than bread? Informal
Communication as a Coping Strategy — The Example of Occupied
Poland (1939–1945)”
• Caroline Mezger: “Rumor and Displacement: Towards an Entangled
History of Forced Migration under the Third Reich”
18:00 Workshop Dinner (Catered by CEU)

Thursday, September 9, 2021
9:30–11:30 Panel II – Violence, Ideological Rivalry, and Political Communication in the
Wartime Balkans
Chair: Constantin Iordachi
• Lovro Kralj: “Negotiating Genocide in a Microcosmos of Fascism:
Nazis, Ustashe and the Arrow Cross in the City of Osijek, 1941–42”
• Nick Warmuth: “Languages of the Concentration Camp –
Communication and Resistance in KL Flossenbürg”
• Iva Jelušić: “The Role of Women in Maintaining the Partisan
Information Network in Wartime Yugoslavia”
11:30–11:45 Coffee Break
11:45–13:15 Panel III – Archival Traces and Informal Communication in Postwar
Eastern Europe
• Ioana Macrea-Toma: “Relic Data or Knowledge? The Art and
Science of Information Processing at Radio Free Europe during the
Cold War”
• Andras Mink: (Title TBA)
• Oksana Sarkisova: “Traces of War: Private Photographic Collections
and Memories of WWII in Russia”
13:15–14:30 Lunch
14:30–17:00 Session at Open Society Archives (OSA)

Friday, September 10, 2021
09:30–11:30 Panel IV: On the Soviet Front: Information Deficits, Unpublished Novels,
and Popular Song during and after the Great Patriotic War
• Charles Shaw: “Timur’s Ghost, Basmachi Revolts, and other Tall
Tales: The Convergence of Information Deficits on the Soviet
Central Asian Homefront”
• Faruh Kuziev: “The Sharora Republic of Letters: Two Women’s
Correspondence and ‘Letter-Novels’ in the USSR”
• Marsha Siefert: “Three Tenors in Stalin’s War: Popular Song,
Politics, and Affective Communication”
11:30–12:00 Final Discussion Round