BETH A.

GRIECH-POLELLE
The Kurt Mayer Chair in Holocaust Studies
Department of History
Pacific Lutheran University
Education:
Ph.D., May 1999, Rutgers,
The State University of New Jersey
Modern European History
Dissertation: A Pure Conscience is Good Enough: Bishop von Galen, the Nazis, and the
Question of Resistance
Dissertation Advisor: Omer Bartov
B.A., May 1987, Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Graduated Summa cum laude, GPA 3.95/4.0
Honors Thesis: The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Moral Collapse and the Rise of
Enthusiasm
Project Advisor: John A. Lukacs
Academic Positions:
The Kurt Mayer Endowed Chair in Holocaust Studies, Associate Professor with tenure, Pacific
Lutheran University, September 2015- present.
Associate Professor of Modern European History, Bowling Green State University, Fall 2000May 2015. Tenure awarded May 2007.

Research Interests:
The Holocaust, The Catholic Church in Nazi Germany, Modern European History, Modern
German History with special emphasis on the Nazi time period, the Spanish Civil War, the
history of anti-Semitism, and European womens history since 1700.
Publications:
1. Books:
a. Scholarly books:
Bishop von Galen: German Catholicism and National Socialism, Yale University Press, Fall
2002.
Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust: Language, Rhetoric, and Traditions of Hatred, Bloomsbury
Academic Press, London, UK, forthcoming Fall 2016.
Co-editor with Christina Guenther, Trajectories of Memory: Intergenerational Representations of

the Holocaust in History and the Arts, Cambridge Scholars Press, Fall 2008.
Editor, The Nuremberg Trials and Their Policy Consequences Today, NOMOS Verlag, BadenBaden, Germany, Fall 2008.
b. Chapters in books:
The Catholic Episcopacy and the National Socialist State, edited by Jan Nelis, Anne Morelli,
and Danny Praet, in Catholicism and Fascism in Europe 1918-1945, Georg Olms Verlag, New
York, 2015, 223-236.
Jesuits, Jews, and Communists: Portrayals of Jesuits and other Catholic Religious in Nazi
Newspapers during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, edited by James Bernauer and Robert
Maryks, in Brill Press, Boston, 2014, 161-182
Der Nationalsozialismus und das Konzept der politische Religion, appeared in Zerstrittene
Volksgemeinschaft Glaube, Konfession und Religion im Nationalsozialismus, edited by
Manfred Gailus and Armin Nolzen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gttingen, 2011, pages 204-226.
The Impact of the Spanish Civil War on the German Roman Catholic Clergy, appeared in
Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust, edited by Kevin P. Spicer, Indiana
University Press, published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
2007, pages 121-135.
A Pure Conscience is Good Enough: Bishop von Galen and Resistance to Nazism, appeared in,
In Gods Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century, edited by Omer Bartov and
Phyllis Mack, Berghahn Books, 2000 (hardback) and 2001 (paperback), pages 106-122.
c. Recorded Books Series:
The Modern Scholar Recorded Books, Life Under the Third Reich (working title), completed
June 2014, not released yet.
The Modern Scholar Recorded Books, Europes Dark Journey: The Rise of Hitler and Nazi
Germany, Fall 2014.

2. Journals:
Refereed Articles:
Jesuits and Judeo-Bolshevism under the Nazi Regime, Journal of Jesuit Studies Special
Edition collection of essays for the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, anticipated
Spring 2017.

Festschrift for noted scholar, Gerhard Besier. The volume will be edited by Professor Dr. Andrea
Strbund and Dr. Katarzyna Stoklosa and Dr. Gerhard Lindemann. Crusade: The Spanish Civil
War, the Invasion of the Soviet Union, and the German Catholic Church. Fall 2007.
Bishop von Galen and German Protestants: The Quest for Full Integration, in Kirchliche
Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 19, Issue 2, 2006, pages 336-346.
Bishop von Galen and the Judeo-Bolshevik Conspiracy, in Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Fall
2002, pages 431-447.
Image of a Churchman-Resister: Bishop von Galen, the Euthanasia Project and the Sermons of
Summer 1941, in the Journal of Contemporary History, January 2001, pages 41-57.