Katja Happe (Germany), Researcher, Freiburg University, “Die Geschichte der Judenverfolgung in den Niederlanden 1940-1945”. Read the interview with Katja Happe.

Katja Happe is a researcher at the Newer and Modern History Department at the University of Freiburg, and is working on a three-year project " Die Geschichte der Judenverfolgung in den Niederlanden 1940-1945”. Ultimately, her research will result in a book. Such extensive research on the Holocaust in the Netherlands from a German perspective has not been done before. Katja examines in particular the external factors that affected the persecution of Jews in the Netherlands.

Katja studied History and German Studies at the University of Siegen and the University of Groningen and wrote her thesis on the history of ‘Moffenmeiden’ (Dutch girls who had relationships with German soldiers).

In 2004, she graduated from the University of Siegen with ‘Deutsche in den Niederlanden 1918-1945. Eine historische Untersuchung zu nationalen Identifikationsangeboten im Prozess der Konstruktion individueller Identitäten". The Netherlands and questions of identity remain important themes in her career. She worked on the exhibition “Was ist deutsch?” in the Germanisches National Museum Nürnberg, and the large-scale “Editionsprojekt”: 'Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945" ( www.edition-judenverfolgung.de), where she was partly responsible for the documents on Belgium and the Netherlands in volumes 5 and 12 on Northern and Western Europe. She is a founding member of the Working Group on German-Dutch History.

During her fellowship at the NIOD, Katja has especially worked on the structure of her book. Read more about Katja and her research.