Denise Schreuder MA

PhD candidate

Area(s) of interest: Memory Studies, Oral History & Life Writing, Transnational History

Cohort/Start PhD: 2023-2024

Wanneer zwijgen geen optie meer is; de betekenis van de historische representaties van Nederlandse, Belgische en Duitse nakomelingen van nationaalsocialisten en Nazi collaborateurs over hun familiale oorlogsgeschiedenis voor hun eigen leven en de (trans-)nationale culturele herinnering.

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Supervisors: Prof. dr. Kees Ribbens and dr. Pieter Van den Heede

In September 2023, Denise Schreuder started as an external PHD candidate at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC). She studies the narratives of the second, third, and fourth generation descendants (born after 1950) of national socialists and Nazi collaborators from the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. The study explores their efforts in searching for and (re-)constructing their family’s war history. Additionally, the research investigates the various media forms through which these descendants have told their stories in the public domain from 2000 to 2025. The aim of Schreuder’s research is to gain deeper insight into the transgenerational transmission of these sensitive war memories in families and the impact of such memories for the present generations of descendants. It also looks at the interplay between individual memory, family memory, and the cultural and collective memory in these three countries, which are noted for their distinct national memory discourses surrounding the Nazi past, collaborators, and perpetrators. The project aims to be a transnational comparative analysis from the perspectives of cultural history, memory studies and oral history.