Antisemitism Then and Now

Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of Kristallnacht
Panel Discussion
December 5, 2013
4:00 p.m.
President's Room Coffman Memorial Union
University of Minnesota



Is there a new antisemitism? A growing body of reports and research centers claim that a new strain of antisemitism is sweeping the globe. Five renowned scholars in the field of antisemitism studies will discuss historic antisemitism, its long term after effects and contemporary manifestations in Europe and the US.

Convened by Alejandro Baer, Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) and Klaas van der Sanden, Interim Director, Center of Austrian Studies (CAS)

Panel:
• Philip Spencer (Kingston University, UK, Historian).
• Chad Allan Goldberg (University of Wisconsin Madison, Sociologist)
• Zsolt Nagy (University of St. Thomas, Political Scientist,)
• Gary Cohen (University of Minnesota, Historian)
• Bruno Chaouat (University of Minnesota, French Literature & Thought, former Director, CHGS)

Sponsored by: The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Center for Austrian Studies, The institute for Global Studies, The European Studies Consortium, Center for Jewish Studies, Center for German and European Studies, and the Jewish Community Relations Council

An Argentine Genocide? Individual Accountability and Collective Guilt during 1976-83 Dictatorship

A talk by Antonius Robben, Anthropology,
Utrecht University
Monday, November 25
4:00p.m.
125 Nolte Center



The sentencing of Argentine officers for carrying out genocide by disappearing tens of thousands of citizens has opened a public debate about agency and accountability during the 1976-83 military dictatorship. This presentation analyzes how this shift from gross human rights violations to genocide is having extensive implications for national memory, political responsibility, international law, and the concept of genocide.

Antonius Robben (PhD, Berkeley, 1986) is Professor of Anthropology at Utrecht University and past President of the Netherlands Society of Anthropology. He has been a research fellow at the Michigan Society of Fellows, Ann Arbor, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, New York, and the David Rockefeller Center, Harvard University. His most recent books include Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina (2005) that won the Textor Prize from the American Anthropological Association in 2006, and the edited volume Iraq at a Distance: What Anthropologists Can Teach Us About the War (2010).

Organized by the IAS Reframing Mass Violence: Human Rights and Social Memory in Latin America and Southern Europe Collaborative. Cosponsored by the Human Rights Program, and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

German prosecutor to recommend murder charges against 94-year-old Michael Karkoc

AP Exclusive: Soldier ties Minnesota man to Nazi civilian massacre; Germany pursuing charges
11-18-2013

Local Holocaust Survivor to Speak on Campus

Dora Zaidenweber will speak on Thursday, November 21 at 2:15p.m.
Room 155 Blegen Hall.



Zaidenweber will be sharing her story with students in History of the Holocaust course taught by visiting scholar Falko Schmieder. The talk will be open to the public to allow students, scholars, staff and interested individuals the opportunity to hear her speak about her experiences.

Zaidenweber was born Dora Eiger on January 24, 1924 in Radom, Poland. Dora and her family were sent to the Radom ghetto in 1941. She was transported to Auschwitz in July 1944 where she remained until January of 1945 when she was evacuated on a forced march to Betgen Belsen where she was liberated in April of 1945. She and her husband Jules settled in Minnesota in 1950.

Recently Dora and her family published her father's memoir Sky Tinged Red which is Isaia Eiger's chronicle of his two-and-a-half years as a prisoner in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp during World War II.

More information about Dora and her family can be found by clicking here.

Lawyers Without Rights: Jewish Lawyers in Germany Under the Third Reich Exhibition comes to Minnesota

October 21-November 21

Minneapolis Federal Courthouse



"Lawyers Without Rights" tells the story of the fate of German Jewish lawyers, judges and prosecutors after Hitler came to power. The Exhibit explores Hitler's systematic and calculated strategy to disable the legal system and the constitutional framework of the Weimar Republic, setting the stage for the commission of unthinkable crimes against humanity.


Exhibition Schedule:

Oct. 21 - Nov. 4 Minneapolis Federal Courthouse
Nov. 4 - Nov. 9 Minnesota Judicial Center
Nov. 9 - Nov. 14 Duluth Federal Courthouse
Nov. 14 - Nov. 16 University of Minnesota School of Law
Nov. 17 - Nov. 20 IDS Center, Crystal Court
Nov. 21 Minneapolis Marriott, City Center

The exhibition is sponsored by the U.S. District Court, the Federal Bar Association Minnesota Chapter, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), ), Justice David Stras of the Minnesota Supreme Court, the Cardozo Society, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, The Law School and the Center for Austrian Studies, the University of Minnesota.

November 14 is Give to the Max Day!

On November 14, every donation you make gives your favorite nonprofits and schools the chance to win even more money. Hundreds of organizations will offer the opportunity to double your dollars with matching grants throughout the 24 hours. And, today through November 13, you can schedule your donation.

Be a light for the U's Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies on Give to the Max Day.

Make a gift by clicking here.

Antisemitism Summary in the European Union now online

Antisemitism: Summary overview of the situation in the European Union 2001-2012
11-11-2013

Website created by Hebrew University has Holocaust Testimonies as early as 1959

900 of earliest Holocaust testimonials available online
11-11-2013

"The Concept of Survival" a lecture by Visiting Scholar Falko Schmieder

Wednesday, November 20
TIME CHANGE
1:00 p.m.
Room 710 Social Sciences Building

One aspect of the emergence of bio politics around 1800 is the formation of a temporalized meaning of, Survival', indicating a profound change in the understanding of being and its relation to time and politics. A well known linguistic expression of this change is the metaphor "survival of the fittest" which was a key element of Social Darwinist worldview.

The Anthropologist and Ethnographer E.B.Tylor introduced another important concept: that of, "Survivals." As an important methodological tool of the new science of cultural anthropology this concept identifies and explores such elements of culture, which have their origins in pre-modern times and have a second life as inharmonious misfits in modernity, creating conditions of the synchronicity of the nonsynchronous.

In his presentation Schmieder examine the significance of the temporalization of survival for different fields of knowledge, and, in a further step, will discuss some turning points of the subsequent history of this concept, which is still relevant for contemporary discourses.

Falko Schmieder is a DAAD visiting professor at the University of Minnesota and is currently teaching the course "History of the Holocaust." He has studied Communications, Political Science and Sociology at various German Universities. Since 2005 he has worked as a researcher at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin.

Co sponsored by the Center for German and European Studies.