Event series Lecture: The End of the Second World War in Ukraine
Press Release No. 56/2025
28 May 2025
Ruperto Carola Lecture Series continues with historian Tanja Penter speaking on the German war of annihilation on the eastern front
The end of the Second World War in Ukraine is the topic of a lecture by Prof. Dr Tanja Penter, who specializes in eastern European history at Heidelberg University. In it, she will focus on “dealing with crimes committed during German occupation, new purges and nationalist underground combat”. Her presentation is part of the Ruperto Carola Lecture Series “1945: Epochal Threshold and Experiential Space”, with which Heidelberg University wants to remember the end of the war in Europe 80 years ago, with its historical turning point on 8 May 1945. The event will take place on Monday 2 June 2025 in the Great Hall of the Old University, beginning at 6.15 pm.
During the German war of annihilation on the eastern front, Ukraine suffered from exploitation, terror, violence and destruction. After the end of the war, the Soviet judicial system began prosecuting the German crimes. At the same time, new Stalinist purges were setting in aimed at suppressing the growing nationalist resistance in western Ukraine. It is striking, says Prof. Penter, how the shadows of past atrocities overlay one another in present-day Ukraine. Tanja Penter is Professor of Eastern European History at Heidelberg University’s Department of History. Her research fields include Ukrainian and Russian history of the 20th and 21st centuries, in particular the crimes committed during the German occupation of the Soviet Union and the way the Soviet system of criminal justice dealt with them. She also focuses on the “memory wars” in eastern Europe.
The Ruperto Carola Lecture Series is part of an approach to focal themes. With it, Heidelberg University seeks to take socially relevant research questions to a broad public twice a year in differing formats. Under the heading “1945: Epochal Threshold and Experiential Space” the present series on the focal theme BACK & FORTH opens up two complementary perspectives – “a retrospective interpretation, which situates the Second World War in the fractures and continuities of 20th century history, and a reconstruction of direct human experience and suffering,” explains historian Prof. Dr Manfred Berg, who designed the current lecture series.
The lecture “The End of the War in Ukraine: Dealing with Crimes Committed During German Occupation, New Purges and Nationalist Underground Combat” will be followed by four more events in the Ruperto Carola Lectures Series, which will take place on Mondays in the Great Hall of the Old University; they begin at 6.15 pm. Recordings will subsequently be accessible on heiONLINE, the central portal of Heidelberg University with lectures, panels and events in digital formats.