Past Lectures

Opportunities for Academics

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Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Annual Lecture

Todd Presner

Professor, Germanic Languages, Comparative Literature, and Jewish Studies; Sady and

Ludwig Kahn Director, Center for Jewish Studies (2010-2018); and Chair, Digital Humanities Program, University of California, Los Angeles “From Wire Recorder to Database–Testimony Technologies and the Digitization of the Holocaust” October 18, 2018

Nikolaus Wachsmann

Professor, Modern European History at Birkbeck College “Concentration Camps: The Limits of Representing History” November 2, 2017

Jennifer L. Geddes

Professor, Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia “Holocaust Testimony, Evil, and Suffering” November 1, 2016

Paul Jaskot

Professor, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, DePaul University “Architecture of the Holocaust” November 4, 2015

Jeffrey Burds

Associate Professor, Department of History, Northeastern University “Communist Collaborators and German Occupation in the Soviet Union during the Holocaust, 1941–1943” October 28, 2014

Peter Hayes

Theodore Zev Weiss Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor, Department of History, Northwestern University “Holocaust Studies: Reflections and Predictions” November 14, 2013 Download paper (PDF)

James E. Young

Distinguished University Professor in English and Judaic Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst “From Berlin to Ground Zero: The Construction of a Memorial Vernacular” October 4, 2012

Lawrence Douglas

James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, Amherst College “Demjanjuk in Munich: War Crimes Trials in Historical Perspective” October 25, 2011

Doris L. Bergen

Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies, Department of History, University of Toronto “Between God and Hitler: German Military Chaplains and the Holocaust” October 27, 2010

David R. Blumenthal

Jay and Leslie Cohen Professor of Judaic Studies, Emory University “How Might Another Holocaust be Prevented?” October 28, 2008

Robert P. Ericksen

Kurt Mayer Professor of Holocaust History, Pacific Lutheran University “Christian Complicity? Changing Views on the German Churches and the Holocaust” November 8, 2007 Download paper (PDF)

Yehuda Bauer

Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem “On the Holocaust and Other Genocides” October 5, 2006 Download paper (PDF)

Raul Hilberg

Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Vermont, Burlington “Auschwitz Through the Lens of its Builders” November 15, 2005

Alvin H. Rosenfeld

Director, Institute for Jewish Culture and the Arts, Indiana University, Bloomington “Anne Frank and the Future of Holocaust Memory” October 14, 2004

Judge Thomas Buergenthal

Judge, International Court of Justice, United Nations, The Hague “International Law and the Holocaust” October 28, 2003 Download paper (PDF)

Omer Bartov

John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History, Professor of History, and Professor of German Studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island “From the Holocaust in Galicia to Contemporary Genocide: Common Ground—Historical Differences” December 17, 2002 Download paper (PDF)

Konrad H. Jarausch

Lurcy Professor of European Civilization at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Codirector of the Center for European Studies at the University of North Carolina and Duke University, and Director of the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Studien in Berlin-Potsdam “The Conundrum of Complicity: German Professionals and the ‘Final Solution’” June 11, 2001 Download paper (PDF)

Sir Martin Gilbert

“Holocaust Writing and Research Since 1945” September 26, 2000 Download paper (PDF)

Frank Stern

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel “Facing the Past: Representations of the Holocaust in German Cinema since 1945” June 14, 2000 Download paper (PDF)

Peter Longerich

University of London “Policy of Destruction: Nazi Anti-Jewish Policy and the Genesis of the Final Solution” April 28, 1999 Download paper (PDF)

Jacques Picard

Independent Commission of Experts (Bergier Commission) “On the Ambivalence of Being Neutral: Switzerland and Swiss Jewry facing the Rise and Fall of the Nazi State” September 23, 1997 Download paper (PDF)

Walter Laqueur

Center for Strategic International Studies “Three Witnesses: The Legacy of Victor Klemperer, Willy Cohn, and Richard Koch” June 18, 1996

Gerhard L. Weinberg

“Germany’s War for World Conquest and the Extermination of the Jews” June 11, 1995 Download paper (PDF)

Monna and Otto Weinmann Annual Lecture

Laura Jockusch

Albert Abramson Associate Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University "Betrayal and Justice in Jewish Courts After the Holocaust" October 26. 2022

Judy Batalion

Author, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos, and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors "Defying Expectations: Women Resistance Fighters during the Holocaust" November 8, 2021

Leora Auslander

Arthur and Joann Rasmussen Professor in Western Civilization and Professor of Modern European Social History, University of Chicago "Holocaust Relics: Personal Treasures or Public Evidence?" November 9, 2020

Dagmar Herzog

Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center, City University of New York “Post-Holocaust Trauma and the Creation of PTSD” June 6, 2019

Devin Naar

The Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies and Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at the University of Washington in Seattle “Far From Us, but Close at Heart': Sephardic Jews in America Confront the Holocaust” June 6, 2018

Robin Judd

Professor of History at the Ohio State University “Loss, Liberation and Love: Jewish War Brides and Soldier Husbands, 19431946” June 15, 2017

Mehnaz Afridi

Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College “Redefining Antisemitism Through the Stories of Jews and Muslims During the Holocaust” June 1, 2016

Norman J.W. Goda

Norman and Irma Braman Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Florida “Surviving Survival: James G. McDonald and the Fate of Holocaust Survivors” June 11, 2015 Download paper (PDF)

Sara Horowitz

Professor of Comparative Literature, York University “Mothers and Daughters in the Holocaust” June 12, 2014

Susannah Heschel

Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College “Jewish-Christian Dialogue in the Postwar Era: The American Distinction” June 10, 2013

Randolph Braham

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Director of the Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Graduate Center of the City University of New York “Postmortem of the Holocaust in Hungary: A Probing Interpretation of the Causes” June 20, 2012 Download paper (PDF)

Marianne Hirsch

William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Professor, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and Co-Director of the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference, Columbia University “Fantasies of Return: The Holocaust in Jewish Memory and Postmemory” June 21, 2011

Hasia Diner

Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History, Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, and Director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History, at the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University “American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945-1962” May 6, 2010

Gerhard L. Weinberg

William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor Emeritus of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “Kristallnacht 1938: As Experienced Then and Understood Now” May 13, 2009

Kenneth Waltzer

Professor of History, James Madison College of Michigan State University “The Rescue of Children and Youths at Buchenwald” May 15, 2008

Beth B. Cohen

Lecturer in History and Jewish Studies, California State University, Northridge “Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America: Facts and Fictions of the Early Years” May 16, 2007

Deborah Dash Moore

Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor of History and Judaic Studies and Director, Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor “Through American Eyes: Jewish GIs First Encounter with Holocaust Survivors” May 24, 2006

George Iggers

Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, University of Buffalo, State University of New York “Refugee Historians from Nazi Germany: Political Attitudes Toward Democracy” September 14, 2005 Download paper (PDF)

Henryk Grynberg

A child survivor of the Holocaust, a novelist, poet, and playwright based in Washington, DC “The Holocaust as a Literary Experience” May 12, 2004 Download paper (PDF)

Deborah E. Lipstadt

Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and Director, Institute for Jewish Studies, Emory University, Atlanta; Member, United States Holocaust Memorial Council; and chair of the Council’s Academic Committee “Denial on Trial: Defending the History of the Holocaust in a British Courtroom” September 10, 2003

Peter Suedfeld

Dean Emeritus of Graduate Studies and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver “Life after the Ashes: The Postwar Pain and Resilience of Young Holocaust Survivors” May 15, 2002 Download paper (PDF)

Matthew E. Baigell

Rutgers University “The Holocaust and Jewish Artists in New York in the 1940s” May 16, 2001 Download paper (PDF)

Henry Greenspan

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor “The Awakening of Memory: Survivor Testimony in the First Years after the Holocaust, and Today” May 17, 2000 Download paper (PDF)

Peter Gay

Emeritus, Yale University and The Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library “Moritz Fröhlich—Morris Gay: A German Refugee in the United States” June 23, 1999 Download paper (PDF)

Carol Loomis

Fortune Magazine “Survivors—and Success—in American Business” September 10, 1998

Robert Krell

University of British Columbia “Psychological Reverberations of the Holocaust in the Lives of Child Survivors” June 5, 1997 Download paper (PDF

Arthur Hertzberg

New York University “The First Encounter: Survivors and Americans in the Late 1940s” May 30, 1996 Download paper (PDF)

Geoffrey Hartman

Yale University and the Fortunoff Video Archive for Video Testimonies “Preserving Living Memory: The Challenge and the Power of Video Testimony” May 30, 1995

J. B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Annual Lecture

Jean-Marc Dreyfus

Reader in Holocaust Studies at The University of Manchester  "At the Margin of the Holocaust? Writing the Biography of a Mischlinge in the German Foreign Office: Vollrath von Maltzan" December 9, 2019

Amos Goldberg

Professor of Jewish History in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem “A Fool or Prophet? Rubinstein, the Warsaw Ghetto Street Jester” March 13, 2019

Debórah Dwork

The the Rose Professor of Holocaust History and Founding Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University “Saints and Liars: American Relief and Rescue Workers during the Nazi Era” February 15, 2018

Marion Kaplan

The Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History at New York University “Lisbon is Sold Out! The Daily Lives of Jewish Refugees in Portugal During World War II” November 13, 2014

Omer Bartov

 John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History and a professor of history and of German studies at Brown University “Understanding Local Genocide: A Galician Town in the Time of the Holocaust” February 13, 2013

Steven T. Katz

Alvin J. and Shirley Slater Professor of Jewish and Holocaust Studies and Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University “Thinking about Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust” February 29, 2012

Karel C. Berkhoff

Associate Professor, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences “Babi Yar: Site of Mass Murder, Ravine of Oblivion.” February 9, 2011

Susan Rubin Suleiman

C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University “Irène Némirovsky and the 'Jewish Question' in Interwar France” February 4, 2010

David Cesarani

Research Professor of History and Director of Research at Royal Holloway, University of London “Challenging the 'Myth of Silence': Postwar Responses to the Destruction of European Jewry” April 2, 2009

Donald Bloxham

University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom “The Legacies of Nuremberg in History, Politics, and Law” April 10, 2008

David G. Roskies

Sol and Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish Literature and Culture and Professor of Jewish Literature, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York “1943: The Jewish World at Ground Zero” March 27, 2007

Zvi Gitelman

Professor of Political Science and Preston R. Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor “Why They Killed Their Neighbors: The Myth of 'Judeo-Bolshevism' and Holocaust-Era Pogroms in Eastern Europe” March 16, 2006

Vicki Caron

Diann G. and Thomas A. Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies, Cornell University “Prelude to Vichy: Antisemitism in France in the 1930s” April 20, 2005

Peter Longerich

Professor of Modern German History at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Director of Royal Holloway's Research Centre for the Holocaust and Twentieth Century History “Life of a Perpetrator-Heinrich Himmler: Comments of A Biographer” April 28, 2004

Steven J. Zipperstein

Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History and Co-Director, Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Stanford University “Past Revisited? Historical Reflections on Contemporary Antisemitism” January 16, 2003 Download paper (PDF)

Gerhard L. Weinberg

William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “World War II Leaders and Their Visions for the Future of Palestine” January 31, 2002 Download paper (PDF)

Geoffrey Giles

“Why Bother about Homosexuals? Homophobia and Sexual Politics in Nazi Germany” May 30, 2001 Download paper (PDF)

Hans Mommsen

“Future Challenges to Holocaust Scholarship as an Integral Part of the Study of Modern Dictatorship” December 13, 1999 Download paper (PDF)

Peter Hayes

“Profits and Persecution: German Big Business and the Holocaust” February 17, 1998 Download paper (PDF)

Lawrence Langer

“Landscapes of Jewish Experience: The Holocaust Painting of Samuel Bak” December 3, 1996

Konrad Kwiet

“The Onset of the Holocaust: The Massacres of Jews in Lithuania in June 1941” December 4, 1995

Ina Levine Annual Lecture

Deborah E. Lipstadt

Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies, Emory University "Antisemitism: Here and Now" April 29, 2020

Alan Steinweis

Professor of History and Miller Distinguished Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Vermont “'The Idea of Eliminating the Leadership Would Not Let Me Rest': Georg Elser’s Attempted Assassination of Hitler in November 1939 and Its Aftermath” December 10, 2018 Read transcript (PDF)

Judith Gerson

Professor, Departments of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University “By Thanksgiving We Were Americans: German Jewish Refugees Remember the Holocaust” Thursday, March 15, 2018

​Jan Grabowski

Professor of History, University of Ottawa, Canada “The Polish Police Collaboration in the Holocaust” Thursday, November 17, 2016

Barbara Engelking

Director, Polish Center for Holocaust Research, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences “Dreams as a Source for Holocaust Research” Thursday, February 11, 2016

Daniel J. Schroeter

The Amos S. Deinard Memorial Chair in Jewish History at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities “There are No Jews in Morocco, Only Moroccan Subjects”: Mohammed V’s Response to Vichy’s Anti-Jewish Laws in Colonial

Lawrence R. Douglas

The James J. Grofeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, Amherst College “The Wages of Justice: The Holocaust, Murder, and Crimes Against Humanity” Thursday, March 13, 2014

Sybille Steinbacher

Professor of Contemporary History, University of Vienna, Austria “Hitler’s Path to Power” March 13, 2013

Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs

Director of the Center for Holocaust Studies, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland “The Holocaust and Coming to Terms with the Past in Post-Communist Poland” April 25, 2012

Mark Roseman

Pat M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies, Indiana University “Saving Jewish Lives in the Reich: An Unknown Resistance and Rescue Network in the Heart of Nazi Germany” March 17, 2011

Oleg Budnitskii

Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow “Soviet Jewish Officers’ Encounters with Germany, 1945” March 18, 2010

Antony Polonsky

Albert Abramson Chair of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University, Boston, Massachusetts “Coming to Terms With the Dark Past: Confronting the Holocaust in Poland and Lithuania” February 12, 2009

Michael Brenner

Chair of Jewish History and Culture, University of Munich, Germany “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Changing Image of German Jewry after 1945” January 31, 2008 Download paper (PDF)

Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska

Head of the Center for Jewish Studies, Vice-Chair of the Department of Cultural Studies, and Professor of American and Comparative Literature, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland “Patterns of Return: Survivors’ Postwar Journeys to Poland” February 15, 2007

Richard Breitman

Professor of History, American University, Washington, DC “Prelude to Catastrophe? The Roosevelt Administration and the Nazi Assault on the Jews, 1938–1939” April 5, 2006

John K. Roth

Edward J. Sexton Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California “In the Shadow of Birkenau: Ethical Dilemmas during and after the Holocaust” February 15, 2005

Aron Rodrigue

Eva Chernov Lokey Professor in Jewish Studies, Stanford University, Stanford, California February 19, 2004 “Sephardim and the Holocaust” Download paper (PDF)

Christopher R. Browning

Frank Porter Graham Professor of History, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill March 13, 2003 “Initiating the Final Solution: The Fateful Months of September–October 1941” Download paper (PDF)

Berel Lang

Professor of Humanities at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, and Senior Research Associate, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York City March 12, 2002 “Uncovering Certain Mischievous Questions about the Holocaust” Download paper (PDF)