Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of California, USA
Jared McBride’s dissertation, “A Sea of Blood and Tears: Ethnicity, Identity and Survival in Nazi Occupied Volhynia, Ukraine 1941-1944,” examines the Nazi occupation of the western Ukrainian region of Volhynia. This project is a social history that examines the contentious themes of local collaboration (both military and administrative), the Ukrainian nationalist uprising, the Soviet partisan movement and ethnic violence from a micro-historical angle. The project also investigates how the Holocaust unfolded in the region and pays special attention to the fate of the Volhynian Jewish population which was virtually wiped out during the war. Mr. McBride utilizes materials from fourteen archives in France, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Russia and the United States, which are in five foreign languages: Russian, Ukrainian, German, Polish and Czech. Nazi administrative documents, letters and diaries of Volhynian citizens and newly declassified war crimes trials from Ukrainian KGB archives are among the sources used to provide an intimate picture of the occupation. Video testimony sources from the Shoah Archive (USC) and the Yahad-In Unum Archive (France) are also integrated. McBride conducted numerous interviews in twenty different villages in the Volhynia region. He received grants from the Mellon Foundation for pre-dissertation research on the Holocaust and a Fulbright-Hays grant for dissertation research. He has been published in Ab Imperio. Mr. McBride is a visiting assistant professor in the History Department at Columbia University.