As a young boy, Northwestern history and German Prof. Peter Hayes first encountered racism and prejudice while watching the civil rights movement in the South on television. The anger and frustration he felt about not being able to do anything led him to begin researching the causes of hatred and persecution.
Hayes’ research into racism led him to the Holocaust, and his unique focus on the relationship between the economy and the rise of Nazism earned him NU’s first endowed chair in Holocaust education.
While Holocaust scholars usually focus on anti-Semitism or remembrance, Hayes’ research centers on analyzing the interaction between German business and the Nazis, showing that the reasons behind German businesses’ failure to halt the Nazis’ advancement could be present in modern corporate society.
“I am always interested in subjects with a moral dimension,” said Hayes, who is teaching Modern Germany this quarter. “I tend to like teaching about the results of human and political conduct and what the true responsibilities of a citizen are.”
Describing himself as the scholar most closely associated with the economic approach to the Holocaust, Hayes said his research into the mind-set of powerful German corporate leaders as the Nazis came to power proves how difficult it would have been to stop Hitler’s political machine.
“Lots of people were brave and tried to stop the Nazis, but the Holocaust happened anyway,” he said. “Some people will always be tempted to blame minorities for their problems, and many others will go along with them. I just use economics to show the general patterns of how and why this could occur.”
Hayes has spent many years in Germany learning the language and researching the histories of large German corporations.
He first visited the country in 1968 during a Winter Break trip to see his brother-in-law’s family while he was earning a master’s degree at Oxford University.
After his visit to Germany, Hayes decided to write his dissertation on corporate Germany’s relationship to the Nazi state. He moved to Germany and worked in a steel factory to experience the German workplace while attending the University of Cologne from 1977 to 1978.
Hayes also lived in Germany from 1992 to 1995, researching for his prize-winning book, “Industry and Ideology: I.G. Farben in the Nazi Era,” about Germany’s largest corporation.
Although Hayes’ research focuses on economic factors, his teaching emphasizes the importance of connecting the past with his students.
“We either remember or forget events depending on how important the event was,” he said. “We haven’t heard anyone speak in person who attended the Gettysburg Address, but we still pay attention to it.”
Hayes joined NU’s faculty in 1980, and he said the endowed chair will help guarantee that classes in Holocaust studies will be a permanent aspect of NU’s curriculum.
“My hunch is that the Holocaust will still seem important in 20 to 30 years, but it’s good to have insurance,” he said. “This university cares very deeply about Holocaust studies and it is shown by the establishment of the chair position.”
Many students in Hayes’ Modern Germany class and History of the Holocaust, a Spring Quarter class, say his interest in the subject matter is evident in his teaching.
“He is a captivating lecturer and one of the best professors at this university,” said Josh Furman, a Weinberg sophomore taking Modern Germany. “I sit there for 90 minutes twice a week, and I don’t check my watch once. He makes the history fascinating.”
Furman said Hayes makes sure to explain the relevance of his research to his classes, showing his students that cases of mass genocide still occur all over the world.
“The more we can educate ourselves, the better we can educate the next generation,” he said. “In another 10 to 15 years, there won’t be any witnesses around of the atrocities of the Holocaust. It is absolutely important that we learn the history now.”
In addition to his teaching, Hayes also is chronicling history by collecting documents for the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. After serving as the museum’s scholar-in-residence from 1997 to 1998, Hayes said the archives will one day serve as an “unparalleled body of material” on the Holocaust.
He also continues to travel to Eastern Europe, serving on the boards of the concentration camp memorials at Buchenwald and Dora.
The chair, funded by the Holocaust Educational Foundation, is named after Theodore Zev Weiss, a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp and president of the foundation.
Weiss said NU has chosen a “most excellent scholar dedicated to teaching” in Hayes.
“He is one of the finest teachers I’ve ever met,” Weiss said. “I am confident the endowment will only enable him to contribute even more, develop new material and shed light on findings not yet discovered from the period.”
But for Hayes himself, studying the Holocaust only leads to more questions about the origin of the racial hatred he has detested since a young age.
“The curiosity of how the Holocaust could happen, and if it could happen again, is likely to remain as long as civilized societies feel vulnerable,” he said.
