“Working through the Past”: German Efforts to Face Their Nazi History

2021 Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Annual Lecture “Working through the Past”: German Efforts to Face Their Nazi History

Dr. Susan Neiman, director of the Einstein Forum, addresses how the German government and its citizens reckoned with its Nazi past and the Holocaust. She chronicles the struggles Germany experienced as its population grappled with their own belief in German victimhood at the close of World War II, along with the realization that the Nazis had systematically victimized, persecuted, and murdered Jews, Sinti-Roma, Germans with disabilities, and Eastern Europeans. Examining the process of reconciliation and compensation over five decades, Dr. Neiman will discuss how cultural shifts, memorialization efforts, and educational changes brought the Holocaust to the forefront of national conversations in Germany.

Speaker
Dr. Susan Neiman, Director, Einstein Forum, Potsdam, Germany

Moderator
Dr. Ray Sun, Associate Professor of History, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington

This program is free and open to the public, but reservations are required. Register here.

For more information, please contact calendar@ushmm.org.

Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff were active philanthropists, focusing especially on Jewish learning and scholarship, as well as music, the arts, and humanitarian causes. Their children, Eleanor Katz and Harvey M. Meyerhoff, who is a Chairman Emeritus of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, have endowed this lecture, which is organized by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.