Europe and the Holocaust - Shifts in Public Debates in Poland, Germany and the United Kingdom
12 September 2012–15 November 2012, 1:00 pm–9:00 pm
Event Information
Open to
- All
15 November 2012
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The panel investigates shifts in the role of the Holocaust in European public debates in the recent past. Contrasting developments in Poland, Germany, and Great Britain, we will identify common threads as well as differences in perceiving, presenting, memorizing the mass murder of European Jewries.
Panel
Dr Ulrich Baumann: Deputy Director of the Stiftung Denkmal für die Ermordeten Juden Europas (Foundation to the Murdered Jews of Europe). His research focus is on the history of National Socialism and in social and gender history. In 2000, he published Zerstörte Nachbarschaften, a history of interethnic cohabitation of Jews, Catholics and Protestants in rural Southern Germany. Dr Baumann contributed significantly to the realization of the Information Centre at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. Since then, he has (co-) curated exhibitions on Nazi military justice, on the so-called 'Kristallnacht' in November 1938, and on the Eichmann trial: 'Facing Justice - Adolf Eichmann on Trial'.
Prof David Cesarani: Research Professor in history at Royal Holloway, University of London. He advised the Home Office unit responsible for Holocaust memorial day and was a member of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office delegation to the Intergovernmental Taskforce for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. Prof Cesarani has written several monographs dealing with the Nazi persecution and mass murder of the Jews, including Eichmann. His life and crimes (2004), which won the 2006 National Jewish Book Award for History in the USA, and Major Farran's Hat. Murder, scandal and Britain's war against Jewish terrorism, 1945-1948 (2008). He edited several more, including (with Paul Levine) 'Bystanders to the Holocaust. A re-evaluation (2002). He has also acted as historical consultant on numerous radio and TV documentaries, and is a contributor to the Guardian.
Mr Ben Helfgott: MBE, D.Litt. Institute of Education, London, Dr.h.c. University of Southampton, Chairman of the Institute of Polish-Jewish Studies, Oxford and Chairman '45 Aid Society Holocaust Survivors.
Dr Jacek Leociak: Member of the Institute for Literary Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences, where he heads the research team for Holocaust Literature, and member of the Centre for Holocaust Research, equally at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Prof. Leociak is co-editor of the yearbook Zaglada Zydów. Studia i Materialy (Holocaust. Studies and Materials), and member of the experts' team curating the Holocaust Gallery in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, to be opened in Warsaw in 2013. Co-author (with Barbara Engelking) of The Warsaw Ghetto. A Guide to the Perished City (Yale University Press 2009). Among his most recent books is Rescuing. Tales by Poles and Jews, Kraków 2010, and Looking at Warsaw Ghetto, Warsaw 2011 (both in Polish).
Dr François Guesnet: Reader of Modern Jewish History at the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL, will chair the discussion.
This event event is co-hosted by the Institute of Polish-Jewish Studies, Oxford, Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL, Polish Cultural Institute and UCL European Institute.