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Join the Cracow Memorial Committee for the 81st anniversary commemoration of the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto.
Commemorate the tragic events of March 13th and 14th, 1943, when the Kraków ghetto was liquidated.
Honor the memory of the pre-war Jewish community that perished during the Holocaust.
Celebrate the resilience of life over death—the victory of survival and remembrance.
This solemn event serves as a bridge between generations now living in Melbourne, ensuring that the memory of those lost remains alive and that the lessons of history continue to resonate.
What does it mean to be proud of being Jewish? In a post-October 7th world, when so many aspects of Jewish identity are being put under a microscope, some might feel more comfortable keeping their cultural and religious observance private.
In this timely and important conversation, Ben M. Freeman will discuss the importance of being open about one’s Jewishness, the necessity of maintaining Jewish pride, and techniques for inculcating a love of Judaism in one’s children. With increasing levels of antisemitism in Melbourne and around the world, this conversation will also afford an opportunity to consider tactics for navigating hostile situations.
Founder of the modern Jewish Pride movement, a leader, thinker, and educator, Ben M Freeman is the author of the seminal Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People and its follow up, Reclaiming our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride. He is currently working on the finale of his Jewish Pride trilogy, The Jews: An Indigenous People. Educating, inspiring and empowering, his work focuses on Jewish identity and historical and contemporary Jew-hatred. A Holocaust scholar for over fifteen years, Ben came to prominence during the Corbyn Labour Jew-hate crisis in the UK and quickly became one of his generation’s leading Jewish thinkers and voices against Jew-hate. Voted number 8 on the inaugural 25 Young ViZionaries list by the Jerusalem Post and JNF-USA, he is also a Jewish Diplomat for the World Jewish Congress, a Research Fellow for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism Policy and a columnist for The Jerusalem Post.
PhD, Classical Hebrew and Biblical Studies: MA; Ancient History
Simon has a passion for Holocaust education and believes strongly in helping to preserve the legacy of our survivors. In his role he creates and oversees programs to enhance broader community understanding of the Holocaust and its lessons.
For six years, Simon served as a sessional lecturer at the University of Sydney, and as an Education Officer at the Sydney Jewish Museum. Simon has developed and taught programs relating to Nazi racial science, Jewish resistance and the history of the Holocaust. Simon’s research interests concern the identification of references to the biblical and rabbinic literature in documents produced during the war.
The Melbourne Holocaust Museum’s Holckner Family Bnei Mitzvah program is a ninety-minutes workshop designed to connect those undergoing their Bnei Mitzvah to the Holocaust in a meaningful way. The program will allow participants to engage with the experiences of Holocaust survivors, to be inspired by their resilience and the kindness of strangers, as well as to reflect on the significance of their Bnei Mitzvah and what being Jewish means to them.
Parents/guardians do not need to stay for the duration of the program.
The Melbourne Holocaust Museum invites you to a lecture run by Prof. Andrew Markus AO FASSA.
Rabbi Ralph Genende wrote in early March that “since October 7, I have keenly realised that history has apparently reverted back to the most primeval of times… I certainly never expected to feel this way in Australia.” The Executive Council of Australian Jewry documented 662 antisemitic incidents during October and November 2023, reflecting a 738% increase compared to the same period the previous year. Among these incidents were death threats directed at Jewish organisations and individuals, frequent anti-Israel demonstrations extolling violence, pervasive acts of intimidation such as the public release of personal information identifying members of a Jewish Australian WhatsApp group, and the proliferation of toxic content on social media platforms. Notable flashpoints included a convoy of vehicles driven from Sydney’s western suburbs through the centre of Jewish community and a violent street protest in Caulfield, prompting the evacuation of a synagogue. This talk will consider historical contexts to evaluate present-day manifestations of antisemitism, with reference to earlier periods of Australian history and pre-war Europe.
Image | Shutterstock
Andrew Markus is Emeritus Professor in Monash University’s Faculty of Arts and was previously Director of the university’s Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation. Since 2004 he has been a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2021. He is the author or co-author of more than one hundred academic articles, book chapters, reference works, and reports, and of nineteen books, including Australian Race Relations, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights, and A Second Chance: A History of Yiddish Melbourne.
He has played a leading role in two national surveys of the Jewish community, Gen08 and Gen17, and was the senior researcher on the Scanlon Foundation social cohesion surveys from 2007 to 2021.
On 16 May, MHM Manager of Adult Education Dr Simon Holloway will present a lecture in collabration with B’nai B’rith, exploring the Holocaust experience for Jewish communities living in Hungary.
In 1944, the Jewish communities of Hungary made up some of the last remaining Jews in all of Axis-controlled Europe. The tragic story of their annihilation is all the more macabre when one considers that it happened under the gaze of the entire world, who knew what deportation meant. In this lecture, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the deportations from Hungary, we will explore the peculiar situation faced by Hungarian Jews in light of their prewar experiences, the means by which they were so rapidly destroyed, and some of the heroic attempts made at the 11th hour to rescue them.
Image | A memorial to the murdered Jews in Hungary, on the Danube river, Hungary.
PhD, Classical Hebrew and Biblical Studies: MA; Ancient History
Simon has a passion for Holocaust education and believes strongly in helping to preserve the legacy of our survivors. In his role he creates and oversees programs to enhance broader community understanding of the Holocaust and its lessons.
For six years, Simon served as a sessional lecturer at the University of Sydney, and as an Education Officer at the Sydney Jewish Museum. Simon has developed and taught programs relating to Nazi racial science, Jewish resistance and the history of the Holocaust. Simon’s research interests concern the identification of references to the biblical and rabbinic literature in documents produced during the war.
Join us at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum for the rare opportunity to hear first-hand from Holocaust survivor Guta Goldstein.
Guta was born in Lodz, Poland in 1930. She was nine years old when the Germans invaded Poland.
Guta, her sister, and father were forced into the Lodz Ghetto. Both her sister and father died of illness.
on 14 August 1944 Guta was transported to Auschwitz, where her aunt and cousin were sent to the gas chambers on arrival.
In September Guta and her remaining cousins were transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Guta was eventually sent to the labour camp of Mehltheuer and was liberated by the US army in April 1945.
Guta arrived to Australia in 1949.
We invite you to join us for the commemoration of Yom HaShoah on Monday 6 May 2024.
This year we will host a panel discussion moderated by MHM CEO Dr Steven Cooke. We look forward to hearing from our three panellists, Rachelle Unreich, Anita Lester and Adam Butt, who will share their lived and professional experience of taking on the custodianship of memory. The evening will explore how we can all carry the lessons of the Holocaust into the future and will seek to understand how, in a world threatened by increasing misinformation, distortion and denial, we can bring truth to the forefront.
Image | Simon Shiff
PhD, University of Bristol
Dr Steven Cooke has over 30 years’ experience in the cultural heritage sector across both museums and academia. An internationally recognised expert on the memorialisation of the Holocaust, Steven has published extensively on both the historical evolution of Holocaust museums and memorials, and new approaches to sharing Holocaust survivor testimony. His exceptional work has led the Australian Government to appoint him to the Australian delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, where he represents Australia on the Memorials and Museums Working Group.
From 2002 until 2011 Steven held leadership positions at some of Australia’s most significant cultural heritage sites, including the Shrine of Remembrance. From there, he transitioned into academia where he worked at Deakin University as an Associate Professor and Course Director for the Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies postgraduate programs, helping inspire the next generation of museum professionals.
In 2020 he was the lead investigator on the landmark Gandel Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness in Australia Survey.
Steven believes passionately about the role Holocaust museums can play in educating the whole community about the dangers of racism and antisemitism and in working towards a more cohesive and respectful society.
Rachelle Unreich started her journalism career when she was completing her Arts/Law degrees at Monash University. In addition to studying writing at UCLA, she has lived in New York, Los Angeles, Sydney and Melbourne. She has been a journalist for 38 years, writing cover stories for The Age, Harper’s Bazaar, marie claire, Rolling Stone and others, and has had regular columns in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Herald Sun and Elle magazine. Her work has appeared extensively in Australia, the US, UK and South-East Asia. She currently lives in Melbourne. A Brilliant Life is her debut.
Anita Lester, a multidisciplinary artist from Melbourne, Australia, is celebrated not only for her music but also as an award-winning painter, filmmaker, poet, and illustrator.
She gained recognition through her solo EP “Erato,” released in March 2020 amidst uncertain times. Tracks such as “Wrong Time” and her cover of Leonard Cohen’s “You Want it Darker” found resonance, featuring in film and television, including ‘The Walking Dead’. Her debut album ‘The Clown’, released in March 2023.
In the realm of film, her short ‘Noch Am Leben (I’m Still Alive)’ garnered acclaim at over 50 festivals worldwide, becoming a fixture in Holocaust and Jewish museums globally. Her debut feature ‘Song of Songs’, announced in 2023, further solidifies her impact on cinema.
Anita’s paintings, characterized by their technical skill and mythological themes, have earned praise, with notable works including a portrait of Flea from the ‘Red Hot Chili Peppers’ and a series depicting Holocaust survivors currently set for exhibit in 2025.
Her literary contributions extend to poetry, storytelling, and collaborations such as Arnold Zabel’s upcoming children’s book ‘The Glass Horse of Venice’, set for release in 2024.
Anita Lester’s art is deeply rooted in storytelling, intertwining themes of love, longing, hope, and Jewish culture across her various creative endeavors.
Adam Butt is a barrister who specializes in international arbitration, commercial litigation and human rights law. He has acted on numerous international investment and commercial arbitrations with seats in Europe, Asia, Australia, North America and the Caribbean. He acts on complex human rights and commercial cases and regularly leads teams in Federal and state Supreme Courts, in cases both for and against the Crown. Adam has won major native title and Aboriginal land claim disputes across Australia, in addition to significant claims brought under the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth). This has included claims concerning antisemitism including the Brighton Secondary case, Kaplan v State of Victoria. Currently Adam acts on several cases which involve racial discrimination and related matters, including claims concerning antisemitism and issues of discrimination against Indigenous Australians. During 2020 to 2023, Adam was a finalist each year in Australia’s Lawyers Weekly Barrister of the Year Award, including winning the Award in 2021. Adam’s late grandmother, Rose Butt, was one of the founding volunteer of the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.
Please join us for our nine-week Holocaust Education Course.
This course, running over a series of consecutive weeks, spans the history of the Holocaust from the 19th century through to the liberation of the camps and return to life. Each evening will run from 7-9pm with coffee and tea provided.
The course will be facilitated by MHM Manager of Adult Education Dr Simon Holloway, Co-President Sue Hampel OAM with each evening dedicated to a particular theme.
If you have any further questions about the course, please contact simon.holloway@mhm.org.au for further information.
Please register in advance and secure a place.
Image | Prisoners head south on a Death March from Dachau concentration camp; Gruenwald, Germany, 29 April, 1945. Courtesy of Yad Vashem.
Dates and topics are as follows:
Week 1: The World that Was (Wednesday, 1 May)
Week 2: From the Cross to the Swastika (Wednesday, 8 May)
Week 3: The Rise and Fall of German Jewry and Austrian Jewry (Wednesday, 15 May)
Week 4: Death and Life in the Nazi Ghettos (Wednesday, 22 May)
Week 5: Life Unworthy of Life: The Origins of the Final Solution (Wednesday, 29 May)
Week 6: The Concentration Camp Universe (Wednesday, 5 June)
Break – no course on the week of 12 June.
Week 7: By Any Means Available: Jewish Resistance (Wednesday, 19 June)
Week 8: Survey of Non-Jewish Responses (Wednesday, 24 June)
Week 9: Liberation and Return to Life (Wednesday 26, June)
The Melbourne Holocaust Museum invites you to the exciting launch of FutureGen.
A new generation committed to the preservation of Holocaust history and education
This event will feature guest speaker Holocaust survivor Peter Gaspar OAM. There will also be a special opportunity to tour the ‘Everybody Had a Name’ exhibition and to experience the memorial room after dark.
Cocktails and canapés will be served.
This event is for the FutureGen community. FutureGen is a new generation of community members committed to the preservation of Holocaust history and Holocaust education
Presented by Dr Victoria Grace Walden SFHEA FRSA MILM.
The rise and use of AI and new technologies in our society brings with it advantages as well as new challenges to Holocaust museums.
Although AI and technology present many dangers to the preservation of truth, if used correctly, they can make a vital contribution to the sustainability of Holocaust memory, providing the tools to preserve and share historical collections in ways that weren’t possible before.
Join us as Dr Victoria Walden addresses the value and the limitations of technology during this transformational phase of Holocaust education.
Please join the Melbourne Holocaust Museum, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, for a special film-screening event.
When Sydney-based artist and academic Ella Dreyfus set about exploring her late father’s experiences in the Holocaust, she began a journey that would take her back to Berlin and would culminate with the completion of a powerful 30-minute documentary. With the hope that her film will initiate a dialogue for subsequent generations to confront their own inherited traumas, Dreyfus Drei seeks to penetrate the wall of silence that many survivors erect around their lives.
Combining family interviews in Melbourne and Sydney with visits to the family’s former homes and the construction of public art installations in Germany, the film also features her uncle George Dreyfus’s musical compositions and her cousin Jonathan’s new arrangements. Dreyfus Drei creates a family portrait about exile, identity, and art, and navigates the complex terrain of how three generations from one family each negotiate their own return to the “homeland”.
Dreyfus Drei was written, directed and produced by Ella Dreyfus, co-directed and co-produced by Janis Westphal, Sevenpeaks Films in Berlin, executive production by the Goethe-Institut and commissioned by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media for the 1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany Festival.
After the screening of Dreyfus Drei, Dr Simon Holloway will be in conversation with the director, Ella Dreyfus, who will also take questions from the audience. Following this conversation, participants will have the opportunity to explore our new museum exhibit: Everybody Had a Name.
Learn more about Dreyfus Drei at www.dreyfus3.com
Image | Dreyfus Drei film cover
Join us at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum for the rare opportunity to hear first-hand from Holocaust survivor Vivienne Spiegel.
Viv was born in Paris, France in 1934. She was six years old when the Germans invaded France.
In July 1942 Viv’s, her mother, and two siblings were caught up in the Vel d’Hiv Round Up. In a stroke of luck, the family was released before the transports to Auschwitz.
Following this, Viv’s mother made the difficult decision to separate from her children for their safety. After experiences with families that stole their food rations, Viv and her siblings were sent into hiding in the countryside with a family who cared for them until the end of the war.
After liberation, Viv and her siblings were sent to an orphanage for children, before immigrating to Australia in 1948.
Viv later found out her parents were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The Melbourne Holocaust Museum is proud to host German artists Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock, whose projects over the past three decades, across Europe and the United States, have explored ideas related to collective memory and the Holocaust.
We invite you to hear Professors Stih and Schnock in conversation about the power of public art as a form of social intervention, and their recent commission, Evidence of Evil, displayed within the museum’s new permanent exhibition. This conversation will be moderated by Prof Andrea Witcomb.
Stih and Schnock’s sculpture Bus Stop will be on display at the Museum through March 2024.
This event is supported by
Renata is a Berlin based artist/activist, art critic and curator exhibiting at Lenbachhaus Munich, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, St. Louis Art Museum, among other, and is known for her media and public art discourses, urban interventions and performances. She has been publishing videly on art, theater, film and architecture, and is a critic for TAZ Berlin and Kontura Art Magazine, Zagreb reporting from Berlin’s Film Festival and the Venice Biennale regularly, and has created numerous podcasts and videos.
Professor Stih has been teaching on art, film and technology at the Berlin College of Technology BHT/University of Applied Sciences for decades, and on public art and memory at various US universities and colleges including Princeton, Harvard, SAIC, MICA, RISD, Brown University, Hebrew University, ZhdK. She is also an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Art at Leuphana University, Lueneburg teaching together with Frieder Schnock on environmental topics, ecology, colonial history. Stih acted as president of the San Marino pavillon at Venice Art Biennale, served for a decade as Chair of the Art Advisory Board to the Cultural Senate of Berlin, was on the Board of The Women’s International University at EXPO 2000 in Hannover, and is the co-founder of the Human Rights Watch Committee in Berlin. Fellowships and awards include the German Federal Grant at the Cité des Art in Paris; the Berlin Art Grant; the Freund Fellowship at Washington University, St. Louis; the Rockefeller Fellowship at the Rockefeller Advanced Research Center in Bellagio/Italy; the Obermayer German Jewish History Award; the Whitney J. Oates Fellowship in the Humanities at Princeton University, Rouse Visiting Artist, GSD Harvard University.
Frieder is an artist, art historian, cultural advisor, gallerist and curator widely known for his artistic documentary photography, and public art and memorialization projects in Berlin. He is an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Art at Leuphana University, Lueneburg, has created visual studies at the Berlin College of Technology (BHT), and also taught at numerous art colleges like SAIC, MICA, Bard College, ZHDK, NYU, Princeton University. Schnock has worked as a curator in private and public collections, such as at Museum Fridericianum in Kassel and Engelhorn Foundation in Munich, and as an advisor on Berlin public space and the history of art to entrepreneurs like the architect Jean Nouvel. He is the co-founder of the exhibition organizations Gesellschaft für Blickschulung and Loft 44/45 in Berlin which presented a wide range of experimental artists and activities to Berlin’s audiences.
Fellowships and awards (selection): Rouse Visiting Artist, GSD Harvard University; Rockefeller Fellow at the Rockefeller Advanced Research Center in Bellagio/Italy; Freund Fellow at Washington University, St. Louis; the Obermayer German Jewish History Award, the Whitney J. Oates Fellowship in the Humanities at Princeton University.
Andrea Witcomb is the Alfred Deakin Professor of Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Deakin University, Australia. A former curator, her scholarly work focuses on the interpretation of difficult histories and histories of collecting. She is interested in the use of affective interpretation strategies to engage cross-cultural understanding and empathy for those caught within difficult histories and in ways to cross disciplinary silos in understanding collections.
She has been the recipient of a number of Australian Research Council grants, working with colleagues throughout Australia and internationally to understand the role of museums and heritage sites in the interpretation of difficult histories. She is widely published, authoring monographs, edited books, and journal articles. Her most recent publications, currently in press, include a book cowritten with colleagues on the history of collecting in Western Australia and the role of collections in shaping Western Australian identity, and an edited book on the ethics of collecting contemporary trauma.
Please join us for a four-week course
Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust will apply gender as a lens for understanding the Holocaust. More than 2 million girls and women were murdered during the Holocaust, and their experiences must be understood for their uniqueness. Over the course of 4-weeks we will consider the ‘female voice’ to shed light on Jewish women’s experiences during the Holocaust by examining ghettos, camps, hiding, and resistance. By considering diaries, documents, and testimonies, we will delve into the lived experience that Jewish women faced on a daily basis during the Holocaust and the lessons we can take into the world today.
The course will be facilitated by Head of Exhibitions and Programming Dr Breann Fallon and Co-President Sue Hampel OAM with each evening dedicated to a particular theme.
Please join us for the launch of Bus Stop, an installation by renowned German artists, Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock.
Originally conceived in 1995 as an alternative to a static Holocaust memorial in Berlin, Bus Stop, a mobile sculpture, enables the public to actively commemorate the Holocaust by engaging with former sites of Nazi atrocity. “We wanted to create a work that enables active remembrance through the networking of places and information.”
Professors Stih and Schnock will discuss Bus Stop’s conception and ongoing significance.
Bus Stop will be on display at the Museum through March 2024.
This event is supported by
“BUS STOP” was Stih and Schnock’s response to the competition for a “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe”, where a representative memorial was planned in the center of Berlin, near Brandenburg Gate. Their concept of a transitory memorial aims to clarify that doesn’t need monumental constructs to commemorate the victims, because the whole country and many parts of Europe are full of places and stories that need to be preserved from oblivion. Visiting the former concentration camps makes you feel a sense of trepidation, because the idea of horrific events, the view of harrowing documents that we know from film footage and photos remains unforgettable. Stih and Schnock conceptualized an installation of a transitory sculpture on the dedicated lot, a bus terminal. From there, red buses would drive to actual commemoration sites and former death camps in both, near and distant vicinity all over Europe. The destination and the inscription “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” is written on the red buses. In this way the remembrance of the Holocaust is redirected to the crime scenes, away from that lofty site in the middle of the German capital and right into the banal everyday structure of our mobile society.
Renata is a Berlin based artist/activist, art critic and curator exhibiting at Lenbachhaus Munich, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, St. Louis Art Museum, among other, and is known for her media and public art discourses, urban interventions and performances. She has been publishing videly on art, theater, film and architecture, and is a critic for TAZ Berlin and Kontura Art Magazine, Zagreb reporting from Berlin’s Film Festival and the Venice Biennale regularly, and has created numerous podcasts and videos.
Professor Stih has been teaching on art, film and technology at the Berlin College of Technology BHT/University of Applied Sciences for decades, and on public art and memory at various US universities and colleges including Princeton, Harvard, SAIC, MICA, RISD, Brown University, Hebrew University, ZhdK. She is also an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Art at Leuphana University, Lueneburg teaching together with Frieder Schnock on environmental topics, ecology, colonial history. Stih acted as president of the San Marino pavillon at Venice Art Biennale, served for a decade as Chair of the Art Advisory Board to the Cultural Senate of Berlin, was on the Board of The Women’s International University at EXPO 2000 in Hannover, and is the co-founder of the Human Rights Watch Committee in Berlin. Fellowships and awards include the German Federal Grant at the Cité des Art in Paris; the Berlin Art Grant; the Freund Fellowship at Washington University, St. Louis; the Rockefeller Fellowship at the Rockefeller Advanced Research Center in Bellagio/Italy; the Obermayer German Jewish History Award; the Whitney J. Oates Fellowship in the Humanities at Princeton University, Rouse Visiting Artist, GSD Harvard University.
Frieder is an artist, art historian, cultural advisor, gallerist and curator widely known for his artistic documentary photography, and public art and memorialization projects in Berlin. He is an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Art at Leuphana University, Lueneburg, has created visual studies at the Berlin College of Technology (BHT), and also taught at numerous art colleges like SAIC, MICA, Bard College, ZHDK, NYU, Princeton University. Schnock has worked as a curator in private and public collections, such as at Museum Fridericianum in Kassel and Engelhorn Foundation in Munich, and as an advisor on Berlin public space and the history of art to entrepreneurs like the architect Jean Nouvel. He is the co-founder of the exhibition organizations Gesellschaft für Blickschulung and Loft 44/45 in Berlin which presented a wide range of experimental artists and activities to Berlin’s audiences.
Fellowships and awards (selection): Rouse Visiting Artist, GSD Harvard University; Rockefeller Fellow at the Rockefeller Advanced Research Center in Bellagio/Italy; Freund Fellow at Washington University, St. Louis; the Obermayer German Jewish History Award, the Whitney J. Oates Fellowship in the Humanities at Princeton University.
Join us at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum for the rare opportunity to hear first-hand from Holocaust survivor Joe Szwarcberg.
Joe was born in 1930 in Kozienice, Poland, the youngest of six children. The Germans invaded in 1939 when Joe was nine years old and incarcerated the Jewish population in a ghetto.
Joe risked his life by leaving the ghetto to get food, but nonetheless his mother died due to the poor conditions there. He was deported to a harsh labour camp where he witnessed the murder of one of his brothers. In 1944 he was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
After his liberation in 1945 at the age of 15 Joe was reunited with his sisters. His father had died in a death march from Auschwitz and neither of his brothers survived.
The Melbourne Holocaust Museum and ACJC invite you to a panel discussion about the Pogroms of 1918-1921 in Ukraine and the Onset of the Holocaust.
Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Largely forgotten today, these pogroms served as precursors to the Holocaust. Through stories of survivors, perpetrators, aid workers and governmental officials, Professor Veidlinger explains how so many different groups came to the same conclusion – killing Jews was an acceptable response to their problems.
Image | Jewish men survey damage done to Torah scrolls during pogroms in Russia, Getty Images
Jeffrey Veidlinger is Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. His most recent book, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Ukrainian Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust (2021) won a Canadian Jewish Literary Award and the Stan Vine Book Award and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, the Lionel Gelber Award, and the Wingate Literary Prize. It was named a top book of the year by Kirkus, the Times Literary Supplement, Mosaic Magazine, El Mundo, and El Espanol. He is also the author of the award-winning books The Moscow State Yiddish Theater: Jewish Culture on the Soviet Stage (2000), Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire (2009), and In the Shadow of the Shtetl: Small-Town Jewish Life in Soviet Ukraine (2013). Veidlinger is Chair of the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History, a member of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and a member of the Executive Committee of the American Academy for Jewish Research.
Please join us for our nine-week Holocaust Education Course.
This course, running over a series of consecutive weeks, spans the history of the Holocaust from the 19th century through to the liberation of the camps and return to life. Each evening will run from 7-9pm with coffee and tea provided.
The course will be facilitated by MHM Manager of Adult Education Dr Simon Holloway, Co-President Sue Hampel OAM and Head of Exhibitions and Programming Dr Breann Fallon with each evening dedicated to a particular theme.
If you have any further questions about the course, please contact simon.holloway@mhm.org.au for further information.
Please register in advance and secure a place.
Image | Prisoners head south on a Death March from Dachau concentration camp; Gruenwald, Germany, 29 April, 1945. Courtesy of Yad Vashem.
Dates and topics are as follows:
Week 1: The World that Was (Wednesday, 1 May)
Week 2: From the Cross to the Swastika (Wednesday, 8 May)
Week 3: The Rise and Fall of German Jewry and Austrian Jewry (Wednesday, 15 May)
Week 4: Death and Life in the Nazi Ghettos (Wednesday, 22 May)
Week 5: Life Unworthy of Life: The Origins of the Final Solution (Wednesday, 29 May)
Week 6: The Concentration Camp Universe (Wednesday, 5 June)
Break – no course on the week of 12 June.
Week 7: By Any Means Available: Jewish Resistance (Wednesday, 19 June)
Week 8: Survey of Non-Jewish Responses (Wednesday, 24 June)
Week 9: Liberation and Return to Life (Wednesday 26, June)
