Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett explores the creation of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto and its multimedia narrative exhibition honoring the lives of those who have passed. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a professor emerita at New York University, is also the chief curator of the Core Exhibition at the POLIN Museum. She is presented here by the Jewish Studies Program and the Library at UC San Diego. Series: "Library Channel" [Humanities] [Show...

In describing his new book, “East West Street” author Philippe Sands looks at the personal and intellectual evolution of the two men who simultaneously originated the ideas of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” both of whom, not knowing the other, studied at the same university in a now-obscure city that had once been known as “the little Paris of Ukraine,” a city variously called Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, or Lviv. It is also a spellbinding family memoir, as Sands traces the mysterious...

In his highly-acclaimed book, The Nazis Next Door, Eric Lichtblau tells the shocking and shameful story of how America became a safe haven for Hitler's men. Lichtblau explains here how it was possible for thousands of Nazis -- from concentration camp guards to high-level officers in the Third Reich -- to move to the U.S. after WWII, and quietly settle into new lives as Americans. Some of them gained entry as self-styled refugees, while others enjoyed the help and protection of the CIA, the...

The International Tracing Service, one of the world’s largest Holocaust-related archival repositories, holds millions of documents detailing the many forms of persecution that transpired during the Nazi era and their continuing repercussions. Based on her recently published book, "Nazi Persecution and Postwar Repercussions: The International Tracing Service Archive and Holocaust Research," Suzanne Brown-Fleming provides new insights into human decision-making in genocidal settings, the...

The International Tracing Service, one of the world’s largest Holocaust-related archival repositories, holds millions of documents detailing the many forms of persecution that transpired during the Nazi era and their continuing repercussions. Based on her recently published book, "Nazi Persecution and Postwar Repercussions: The International Tracing Service Archive and Holocaust Research," Suzanne Brown-Fleming provides new insights into human decision-making in genocidal settings, the...

Omer Bartov, the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History and German Studies at Brown University, explores the dynamics of the horrifying genocidal violence which took place in the East Galician town of Buczacz— following the German conquest of the region in 1941— and its subsequent erasure from local memory. For centuries, Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews coexisted in the region, but tragically, by the time the town was liberated in 1944, the entire Jewish population had been...

Eva Kor was 10 when she and her family stepped off the train in Auschwitz in the fall of 1944. Minutes later an SS officer took her and her twin sister, Miriam, away from their mother, father and two older sisters. The twins never saw the others again. Awaiting the girls was Josef Mengele, "the Angel of Death" who performed unspeakably sadistic experiments on roughly 1,500 sets of twins. When the Soviet army liberated Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945, Eva and Miriam were among the fewer than 200...

In his new book, Anatomy of Malice: The Enigma of the Nazi War Criminals, author Joel Dimsdale draws on decades of experience as a psychiatrist and the dramatic advances within psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience since the Nuremberg Trials to take a fresh look at four Nazi war criminals: Robert Ley, Hermann Goring, Julius Streicher and Rudolf Hess. Dimsdale, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego, is presented by the UC San Diego Library. Series: "Writers" [Humanities] [Show...

Born in Jerusalem to parents who had fled Nazi Germany, Israeli journalist Tom Segev is a leading figure among the so-called New Historians, who have challenged many of Israel’s traditional narratives or “founding myths.” His books include, “The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust” (2000); “One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate” (2000); “1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East” (2006); and “Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and...

Writer and artist Charlotte Salomon, the daughter of a highly cultivated Jewish family in Berlin, was deported to Auschwitz and murdered at the age of 26. In her final work “Life? or Theatre?” Salomon envisioned the circumstances surrounding the eight suicides in her family, all but one of them women. Darcy C. Buerkle, an Associate Professor of History at Smith College, explores Salomon’s tragic life as she discusses her remarkable book, “Nothing Happened: Charlotte Salomon and an Archive of...

Veteran trial attorney William L. Lerach recounts his successful class action law suits against companies that prospered by taking advantage of Holocaust victims. Series: "A Life in the Law: Illusions Lost & Lessons Learned " [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 30396]

In his book “The Nazis Next Door: How America Became A Safe Haven For Hitler’s Men,” Eric Lichtblau investigates a trove of newly discovered documents which bring to light an unknown era post WWII. He discusses how Nazis were protected by the U.S. government to become spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers. Series: "Taubman Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Show ID: 29505]

Glenn Kurtz discusses his book, “Three Minutes in Poland,“ inspired by a three minute film that his grandfather had made in a predominantly Jewish town in Poland one year before WWII broke out. The book consists of interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts that tell the stories of seven survivors that lived in this town. Series: "Taubman Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Show ID: 29614]

E. Randol Schoenberg, the grandson of the composer Arnold Schoenberg, is an expert in handling cases involving looted art and the recovery of property stolen by the Nazi authorities during the Holocaust. He tells the story here of his most prominent case, “Republic of Austria v. Altmann” which resulted in the successful return of six paintings by Gustav Klimt, including the “Golden Lady,” to their rightful owners. Series: "Library Channel" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Arts and Music]...

Since the defeat of the Nazis in WWII, Germans have been forced to confront their “unmasterable past.” What was it like to grow up in a divided country burdened with the legacy of genocide? How does one deal with the knowledge of one’s people’s complicity in mass murder, and how does this knowledge affect one’s identity? Primary witnesses of both German and Jewish backgrounds explore answers to these questions. Panelists include Frank Biess, Deborah Hertz, Margrit Frolich and Brian...

Since the defeat of the Nazis in WWII, Germans have been forced to confront their “unmasterable past.” What was it like to grow up in a divided country burdened with the legacy of genocide? How does one deal with the knowledge of one’s people’s complicity in mass murder, and how does this knowledge affect one’s identity? Primary witnesses of both German and Jewish backgrounds explore answers to these questions. Panelists include Frank Biess, Deborah Hertz, Margrit Frolich and Brian...

Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at UC Santa Barbara, discusses her book "The Great Escape" where she followed the lives of nine Holocaust survivors over many decades as they fled fascism by traveling to England and America. They went on to fulfill their professional destinies and change the course of 20th-century history. Series: "Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Show ID: 29236]

Award-winning historian Wendy Lower discusses the lives and experience of German women in the Nazi killing fields. Her study chillingly debunks the age-old myth of the German woman as mother and breeder, removed from the big world of politics and war. The women Lower labels “furies” humiliated their victims, plundered their goods, and often killed them, and like many of their male counterparts, they got away with murder. Lower is the John K. Roth professor of history at Claremont McKenna...

The Holocaust claimed anywhere between 500,000 and 1.5 million Romani lives, a tragedy the Romani people and Sinti refer to as the Porrajmos, or “the Devouring.” Notwithstanding the scope of the catastrophe, the Romani genocide was often ignored or minimized until Ian Hancock and others exposed this misfortune. A Romani-born British citizen, activist, and scholar, Hancock has done more than anyone to raise awareness about the Romani people during World War II. Now a professor at the...

Los Angeles attorney E. Randol Schoenberg presents an illustrated talk focusing upon five paintings by Gustav Klimt that were stolen by the Nazis from the Viennese family of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer in 1938. As a result of a landmark case that Schoenberg argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Klimt paintings, valued at over $325 million, were returned by Austria to their rightful heir in 2006. Series: "Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Arts and...

Forty years ago, Dr. Joel Dimsdale started researching concentration camp survivors. Little did he know where his journey of discovery would lead him. After a visit from a Nuremberg executioner, he switched from studying victims to perpetrators. His latest research is based on an analysis of Rorschach inkblot tests administered at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. Using extensive archival data, Dimsdale reviews what the Nuremberg Rorschachs can (and cannot) tell us about the Nazi mass...

What do we mean by “genocide”? Why are humans the only living creatures that kill their own kind in huge numbers? What place does the Holocaust occupy in the history of genocides? Yehuda Bauer, Professor Emeritus of History and Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explores the essential similarities and differences between the Holocaust and other genocides, particularly ones that have occurred during the last hundred...

Award-winning historian Deborah Lipstadt gives a compelling reassessment of the groundbreaking trial that has become a touchstone for judicial proceedings throughout the world in which victims of genocide confront their perpetrators. Series: "Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 22435]

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes historian Tom Segev for a discussion of his new book, The Life and Legends of Simon Wiesenthal. The conversation focuses on the roots of Wiesenthal's passionate commitment to justice and explores his lifelong quest to convict perpetrators of genocide. Series: "Conversations with History" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 20515]

Professor Mahlendorf discusses some unexpected reader responses to her recently acclaimed memoir, “The Shame of Survival: Working Through a Nazi Childhood”, and the ghosts they raised up for some readers and for herself. Series: "Voices" [Humanities] [Show ID: 19388]