NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies

This special issue explores the enduring visual legacies of the Cold War, an era of stark ideological division and intense geopolitical struggle, whose reverberations continue to shape contemporary crises. While debates persist on whether the Cold War officially ended with the dissolution of the USSR, recent global events – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the resurgence of militarism, and escalating conflicts in Gaza – underscore its lingering impact. Through a transnational lens, the contributors examine how photography, as both a tool of state propaganda and resistance, has documented and influenced the political dynamics of this era. The issue extends prior research, transitioning from hemispheric Latin American contexts to a broader exploration of solidarities and revolutionary histories in East, West, and Southeast Asia, as well as other global regions. Key contributions include analyses of private archival practices that challenge official narratives, such as Soviet ‘dembel’ albums’ revealing soldier experiences and Afghan refugee collections critiquing propagandistic depictions of Afghanistan. By focusing on the circulation and recirculation of visual media, these studies illuminate shifting meanings and the role of photography in constructing memory. The contributors also investigate state-driven photographic networks. For instance, socialist bloc agencies collaborated on exhibitions promoting ideological unity, while Cold War-era Korean and Southeast Asian photographers crafted anti-communist visual solidarities. These projects expose internal contradictions within both ideological camps and highlight the complexities of visual diplomacy. Additionally, the role of photography as a medium for resistance is exemplified by the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s archives, which foster resilience and community under occupation.

Strafrechtelijke vervolging van vreemdelingen voor internationale misdrijven in Nederland Deze bijdrage richt zich op de uitdagingen bij het opsporen en vervolgen van internationale misdrijven (IM) gepleegd door vreemdelingen die als asielzoeker of op basis van gezinshereniging naar Nederland kwamen. Besproken wordt de stand van zaken met betrekking tot de opsporing en vervolging van vreemdelingen vanwege IM, wanneer wordt overgegaan tot vervolging, welke factoren vervolging van vreemdelingen bemoeilijken en wanneer wordt overgegaan tot uitlevering. Om een verscheidenheid aan in het artikel besproken redenen is vervolging van vreemdelingen voor IM uitzonderlijk.

As the field of so-called ‘world museums’ is subjected to the “reparative turn” various projects emerge with the goal to increase the transparency and accessibility of colonial collections. In the wake of the Sarr-Savoy report, making these collections available through digital infrastructures has become a way to comply with this desire. Various examples of such platforms are realized across Europe, including Digital Benin, initiated in Germany, and the Colonial Collections Data Hub, created by a consortium of cultural institutions in the Netherlands. Although these projects have different approaches – Digital Benin focuses on the Benin Bronzes while the Dutch data hub aims to comprise all the colonial collections within the Netherlands – they have the mutual aim to provide more transparency and accessibility. This development raises various practical, theoretical, and conceptual questions about the digital availability of colonial museum collections. The current fragmentary and nation-oriented approach of the available databases, and their ambiguous interpretation of what a colonial collection comprises, can complicate the search of communities of origin for their lost heritage. This contribution offers a reflection on this current development within the field of world museums and examines how the Dutch Colonial Collections Data Hub tries to capitalize on the caveats of making colonial collections digitally available.

Digital Humanities is an evolving, cross cutting field within the humanities employing computer based methods. Research in this field, therefore, is an interdisciplinary endeavor that often involves researchers from the humanities as well as from computer science. This collaboration influences the methods applied as well as the theories underlying and informing research within those different fields. These implications need to be addressed according to the traditions of different humanities' disciplines. Therefore, the edition addresses all humanities disciplines in which digital methods are employed. Digital Humanities Research furthers publications from all those disciplines addressing the methodological and theoretical implications of the application of digital research in the humanities. The series is edited by Silke Schwandt, Anne Baillot, Andreas Fickers, Tobias Hodel and Peter Stadler. Milan van Lange, born in 1992, works as a researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. He studied history at the Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen and did his doctorate at the NIOD and Utrecht University (2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020)(2021). His research interests are at the intersection of contemporary and social history, war studies, digital humanities, digitisation of historical archives, and innovation in research methodology, including the integration of computational methods, text mining, data analysis, and statistics in historical research.

Azerbaijan’s September 19, 2023 attack on the Republic of Artsakh resulted in the almost total displacement of the indigenous Armenian population, making it one of the most successful genocides in history. For over a year before Azerbaijan’s attack, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention viewed Artsakh as the “perfect storm” for genocide prevention and was using as many strategies as possible to urge Western leaders to recognize the threat and take effective action. Any leader willing to challenge Azerbaijan diplomatically would have had the work of many genocide scholars and genocide prevention organizations to back them up. We still believe that coordinated pressure from the Western powers could have had a chance of avoiding genocide and may have resulted in finding a secure, and perhaps independent, space for Artsakh Armenians in their ancestral homeland. This article aims to show how the case of genocide in Artsakh is an object lesson in how diplomatic silences, shaped by geopolitical interests, can provide the power framework in which genocide can easily take place, offer diplomatic cover for the state or organization committing the crime, and normalizing the crime within international relations. It proposes that the genocide in Artsakh ushered in a new “New Imperialism”, in which the post-1945 law-based world order is jettisoned for raw power, threatened communities and unwanted peoples are less safe than they were before September 19, 2023, and genocide will become the order of the day – unless we find new mechanisms to prevent it.

Abstract What happens to people who are accused of atrocity crimes at the bar of public opinion, are publicly indicted, prosecuted, tried, acquitted of criminal charges and then released? Does the mud stick? Or can the dirt also turn into gold, after legal exoneration and possible compensation? This article seeks to trigger a conversation on the international justice community’s stance on condemnation, compensation and convalescence. Through several versatile histories and stories, it gauges how exonerated persons have been navigating life after acquittal. To what extent have they managed to reverse, or recover from, their previous scandalizations, and if so: how? In thinking about this question, we problematize international justice community protagonists and prosecution services’ modus operandi (and effects) of scandalizing first and prosecuting alleged atrocitaires later. We observe that under the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s current circumstances (operating like a cage in search of birds) more suspects have been scandalized than convicted, but that often the scandal lingers. We conclude that for most acquitted persons requesting post-trial compensation is a dead end, and that doing so for some might further increase reputational damage. While several acquitted people ultimately remained defamed, some exonerated persons fully recovered from the human rights scandal by redefining compensation, and by turning the table and scandalizing the ICC.