INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE ALLIANCE GRANT PROGRAM WINNER 2023

Join us for the IHRA Webinar Series, in collaboration with the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre (JHGC), Eastern European Holocaust Studies: Interdisciplinary Journal of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (EEHS), Ukraina Moderna website (UM), and Austrian Service Abroad (ASA) on the theme of “Othering, Occupation, Violence, and Denial”. Topics that will be engaged with under the central theme include the way in which historical analogies and presentism in studying the history of the Holocaust are used to foster deeper understanding and critical thinking about the Holocaust, current armed conflicts and the rise of hate speech. Ways in which oversimplifications, misrepresentations, distortions, and denial of these topics can be challenged and safeguarded against will also be grappled with, alongside testimonies, resistance, education, remembrance, and the collection and preservation of history.

This second webinar in the series deals with the theme of Occupation, featuring speakers: Doris Bergen on “Cultural Genocides, Genocidal Cultures: How Analogies between Residential Schools for Indigenous Children in Canada and the Holocaust Deepen Understanding of German Occupation Practices in World War II”; Jeffrey Veidlinger “Ukrainian occupations, war, and antisemitism: past and present”; and Judge Mykola Gnatovskyy: “The talk addresses the manner in which the ECtHR addresses contemporary human rights issues that are connected to the Holocaust and other crimes committed in the past.”

Doris Bergen is a historian and the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto, specialising in Holocaust research with a focus on Christianity’s role in Nazi Germany, military chaplains, and the intersection of war and genocide. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, she has authored several influential books and pioneered methodologies in gender and sexuality studies related to the Holocaust while advocating for accessible, high-quality research on mass violence.

Jeffrey Veidlinger is the Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan and the inaugural Director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, specializing in Jewish history and Holocaust studies. An award-winning author of multiple books, including In the Midst of Civilized Europe (2021), he holds leadership roles in many institutions, including the Vice-President of the American Academy for Jewish Research, Past Chair of the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History, and a member of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Judge Gnatovskyy, born in 1977 in Kyiv, Ukraine, is an expert in international law with a PhD from Taras Shevchenko National University and extensive experience in academia and international humanitarian law. He served in key roles within the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and other international legal bodies before being appointed as a Judge of the European Court of Human Rights in 2022.