Inaugural CBI Lecture on the Holocaust and Contemporary Social Problems
The Never Again Syndrome: Uses and Misuses of Holocaust Memory in Contemporary Global Politics
Dr. Omer Bartov, Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Brown University
This lecture will raise some fundamental questions regarding the use and abuse of the Holocaust as a historical event, a traumatic memory, and a warning to future generations. Was the Holocaust unique, and if so, what can we learn from it? Was the pledge to prevent genocide from happening again kept, and if not, why? Can the mass murder of the Jews serve as a guide to the nations of the world, and in what ways? If the Holocaust was the clearest justification for the need to create a Jewish state, what role has it played in Israel's history for the last seven decades?
Born in Israel and educated at Tel Aviv University and St. Antony's College, Oxford, Dr. Bartov’s early research concerned war crimes in World War II and the links between war and genocide. He has also written on representations of antisemitism in twentieth-century cinema. More recently he has focused on interethnic relations, violence, and population displacement in Europe and Palestine. His latest books include Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (2018), Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past (2022), and Genocide, The Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis (2023). He is currently writing a book tentatively titled “The Broken Promise: A Personal-Political History of Israel and Palestine,” which is dedicated to investigating the first generation of Jews and Palestinians in Israel, a generation to which he also belongs. His novel, The Butterfly and the Axe, was published in 2023 in the United States and Israel.
Wednesday, February 28th 4:00 pm
In-person in Thompson 104
Streaming live on Zoom (registration link forthcoming)
Free and open to the public