Jan Bank, born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1940. Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam. Professor of Dutch History at Leiden University.
VNC Fellow (1 September 2004 – 30 June 2005)
RELIGION DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR
The NIAS research year was for us a real transition. Brought together by the programme on the “Impact of National Socialist and Fascist Occupations in Europe” (INSFO) sponsored by the European Science Foundation, Lieve Gevers and I concluded a series of workshops and started elaborating the main concept and writing a monograph on the results of our discussions and research. Our team within the INSFO-Programme looked at religion in Europe before, during and after the Second World War. In a series of workshops and two general conferences, the team members, from all parts of Europe, discussed the topics of modern religious history, the results of which will be published in two volumes of essays. The monograph is expected to appear in 2007 in a series of INSFO-publications edited by Berg Publishers.
The NIAS environment proved to be a wonderful mix of concentration, discussion and leisure. Thanks to the Flemish-Dutch cultural treaty (VNC), Lieve Gevers and I were able to work together in a daily exchange of views and opinions. We organised two so-called editorial conferences in which we put under discussion our concepts with a selection of our team members. Another opportunity for a try-out of our ideas was the NIAS seminar in June 2005. As there were Fellows from all parts of Europe, we could often gather information or ask for explanations of particular conditions in various European countries.