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UNO Professor Earns Harvard Book Award

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Dr. Waitman Wade Beorn

Omaha – A UNO professor received top honors from the Harvard University Press last week for his book, “Marching into Darkness,” which looks at the regular German soldiers who perpetrated Nazi war crimes.

Last week, Waitman Wade Beorn, Louis and Francis Blumkin Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at UNO, was named this year’s recipient of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize. The prize is given out each year to an author’s first book or manuscript that is judged as outstanding in content, style and mode of presentation.

The award is named in honor of the former director of the Harvard University Press from 1947 to 1967.

Beorn’s book, fully titled “Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus,” looks specifically at the myth that the German army, or Wehrmacht, played no significant part in the Holocaust. Beorn utilizes archival records, survivor testimonies and eyewitness interviews to help build his argument.

Earlier this year, Beorn gave a public talk related to his book on the UNO campus.

The Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize has been given out by Harvard University Press since 1970. Previous winners have written on topics ranging from Shakespeare to Electricity.

Beorn is the first holder of the Louis and Francis Blumkin professorship, which was established through the Sam and Frances Fried Holocaust and Genocide Education Fund in 2012.

For more information, please contact Charley Reed, UNO media relations coordinator, at 402.554.2129 or by email at unonews@unomaha.edu.

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