International Holocaust Remembrance Day
2013 commemoration on Sunday, January 27
The Neuberger proudly presented our fourth-annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day lecture, generously sponsored by the Esther Bem Memorial Fund. This year's program featured Professor Doris Bergen, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor in Holocaust Studies, U of T. Presented in partnership with the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Toronto.
Click below for complete information.
Generously sponsored by the Esther Bem Memorial Fund; in partnership with the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Toronto.
If you read and listen to personal accounts of the Holocaust, you may notice a paradox. Perpetrators – killers and their accomplices – regularly refuse to accept responsibility. “It was not my fault,” they protest. Yet survivors often make the opposite claim: “I am to blame,” they insist, for not seeing what was coming, for making the wrong decision, for acting or failing to act in some way. How do we explain this contrast, between those who wielded terrible power over the lives and deaths others yet refuse to acknowledge their responsibility, and those who were powerless yet after the fact express remorse. This presentation examines blame, guilt and morality in Holocaust survivor testimony.
Doris L. Bergen is the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on religion, gender, and ethnicity in the Holocaust and World War II and comparatively in other cases of extreme violence. She is the author of several highly-acclaimed books and a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
About International Holocaust Remembrance Day
January 27 marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated this day as International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD)*, an annual day of commemoration to honour the victims of the Nazi era.
*Designated by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7 on 1 November 2005.
Previous January 27 Programming
The Neuberger first commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2010 with a lecture from Professor Leonid Livak about the Jewish Persona in the European Imagination.
On January 27, 2011, the Neuberger presented the second-annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day lecture with Dr. Frank Bialystok. Read about the program in the Canadian Jewish News here. In 2012, the program featured Professors Robert Jan van Pelt and Michiel Horn on At the Edge of the Abyss: David Koker's Concentration Camp Diary.
Presented together with the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto and generously sponsored by the Esther Bem Memorial Fund.
The Neuberger's annual lecture in honour of January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Presented with U of T's Centre for Jewish Studies, sponsored by the Esther Bem Memorial Fund.
All photos credit Michael Rajzman.
Photos credit Michael Rajzman
On January 29, 2012, we commemorated the UN-designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a lecture and book launch of "At the Edge of the Abyss: A Concentration Camp Diary" at the Munk Centre, U of T.
