The Hoover Institution Library & Archives invite you to an in-person and virtual event to inaugurate the Gerd Heidemann collection, as well as the Archives Uncovered series exploring recently acquired collections: Revealing the Third Reich and the Inner Lives of Extremists on March 4, 2025 from 4:00 – 6:00 pm PT in Stauffer Auditorium.
Gerd Heidemann, an investigative reporter and photojournalist, built over decades the largest private collection documenting the crimes of National Socialism and more broadly global conflict between 1910s and 1980s. Previously housed in his basement in Hamburg, the collection is now based at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives. The event will feature the curator and historian who facilitated the acquisition of the collection, as well as a film maker who is now working with the collection.
The event will zoom in onto Heidemann’s 1979 journey to South America, when undercover he interviewed members of the Third Reich’s inner circle who fled to South America. It will also feature the interview with Heidemann conducted a few weeks prior to his death in December 2024, when Heidemann for the first time spoke about the involvement of Western intelligence in his journey to South America. Join scholars and filmmakers as they explore how the Heidemann collection sheds light on the inner lives of extremists.
The Archives Uncovered event series highlights the Hoover Institution Library & Archives’ recently acquired, preserved, and described library and archival material by exploring their contents, building connections to researchers, and tracing the role of history.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Katharina Friedla is a research fellow and the Taube Family Curator for European Collections at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives at Stanford University. She studied History, East European and Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Free University in Berlin, and received her Ph.D. from the University of Basel, Switzerland. Before her appointment at Hoover Library & Archives, Friedla worked as an associate professor, translator, and scientific advisor for universities and institutions in Germany, Israel, and Poland. Friedla has published several books and dozens of articles on Holocaust, nationalism, identity politics, and forced migration in twentieth-century Europe.
Thomas Weber is Professor of History and International Affairs at the University of Aberdeen as well as a Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution. An expert on extremism, national and international order, and democratic breakdown and resilience, he also has taught or has held fellowships at Harvard, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Chicago. The recipient of several publication prizes, including the Duc d’Arenberg History Prize for the best book on European History, Weber’s books include Hitler's First War, Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi, and Als die Demokratie starb.
Foeke de Koe is an award-winning Dutch documentary filmmaker. For 15 years, he worked as an international correspondent, covering stories from the 9/11 attacks in New York and the war in Iraq to the Bataclan terror attacks in Paris. Over the years, De Koe interviewed dozens of international stakeholders, including Tariq Aziz in Baghdad, Nelson Mandela, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Mikhail Gorbachev. After leaving news and current affairs, De Koe transitioned to documentary filmmaking, focusing on untold historical stories. He won a prestigious European award for his three-part series The Downing of the SS Von Imhoff, which recounts the killing of 650 German civilians by a group of Dutch sailors in 1942. For his new project, De Koe and his crew are retracing the 1979 journey of German journalist Gerd Heidemann and former SS general Karl Wolff as they traveled to La Paz, Bolivia, to meet Klaus Barbie. The travel logs, audiotapes, and photographs from Heidemann’s archives serve as the foundation for his upcoming documentary, The Barbie Tapes.
Norman M. Naimark is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also the Robery and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies and a senior fellow of Stanford’s Freeman-Spogli Institute. Naimark is an expert in modern East European and Russia history. His current research focuses on Soviet policies and actions in Europe after World War II and on genocide and ethnic cleansing in the twentieth century. Naimark is the author of the critically acclaimed volumes The Russians in German: The History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Harvard, 1995), Fires of Hate: Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe (Harvard, 2001), and Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton, 2010). In his recent book, Genocide: A World History (Oxford University Press, 2016), Naimark examines the main episodes in the history of genocide from the beginning of human history to the present.
