Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation (ACJC)

In the half century after the Holocaust, ‘Never Again’ was never more than an empty promise. The international community failed to stop the genocide in Cambodia, dithered as crimes against humanity were committed in Bosnia, and passively watched as a million people were killed in the Rwandan genocide. Shamed by these failures, in 2005 the ... Read more

This talk by Dr Noah Shenker provides a comparative analysis of Holocaust testimony archives, calling attention to the myriad ways that audiovisual testimonies, especially those of the Shoah, are shaped by the institutional histories and practices of archival repositories.   Noah Shenker is the 6a Foundation Lecturer in Holocaust and Genocide Studies within the Australian Centre for ... Read more

Yiddish vocabulary that developed during the Holocaust reflected the experiences and preoccupations of East European Jews in conditions of persecution and genocide. This talk will use a postwar Yiddish dictionary of wartime vocabulary as a guide to testimonies and diaries, shedding light on everyday life during the Holocaust. Karen Auerbach is the Jacob Kronhill Lecturer in East European ... Read more

This talk will examine the rehabilitation efforts that surrounded a group of 500 teenage Holocaust survivors, referred to as the Buchenwald Boys, after their arrival in France in June 1945.  This lecture is being held on Buchenwald Liberation day and will be followed by the annual Buchenwald Ball in honour of the Buchenwald Boys who came ... Read more

Now 150 years old, the Alliance has been and remains a unique secular and non-political expression of the idea of emancipation as a centerpiece ofJewish life both outside and inside Israel.  This lecture tells the story of this French institution and its contribution to today’s human rights movement.     Jay M. Winter, the Charles J. Stille Professor of ... Read more

The passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in December 1948 was the last act of the Second World War and the first act of the post-war human rights movement.  This lecture examines the role of René Cassin,drafter of the Universal Declaration, in making human rights work afundamental form of Holocaust commemoration. This lecture is the first ... Read more

Y. L. Peretz (1852-1915) is known as the father of modern Yiddish literature. This lecture will focus on the last ten years of his career when, amidst a burgeoning new secular Jewish culture, Peretz sought a new vision of Jewish identity.  This lecture is the first in a 3 part lecture series by Michael Steinlauf, the Jacob ... Read more

This lecture will examine Polish-Jewish relations over the past two decades, focusing on attempts to explore the “dark corners” of the past as well as contemporary initiatives to renew Jewish life and culture in Poland. This lecture is the second in a 3 part lecture series by Michael Steinlauf, the Jacob Kronhill Visiting Scholar in Yiddish Culture.  Director ... Read more

 This lecture will be delivered in two-parts: 1. Bearing False Witness: What are the stereotypes Jews and Christians have of each other, why do they arise, and how might correct information lead to greater love of our neighbors? 2. On Different Grounds – Jewish and Christian Understandings of the Land of Israel: The divides within and between Jewish and ... Read more

S. Anski’s work about spirit possession, The Dybbuk: Between Two Worlds, became the most popular play in the history of Yiddish theater.This lecture will track the traces of Anski’s Dybbuk both on and off the stage over the past century. This lecture is the third in a 3 part lecture series by Michael Steinlauf, the Jacob Kronhill Visiting ... Read more

On the centennial of Menachem Begin’s birth in Poland, Daniel Gordis explores the life and legacy of Israel’s former Prime Minister based on a biography he is writing about one of Israel’s most enduring and surprising national figures.  The Monash Israel Oration honours the name of Sir John Monash through a public lecture on the history ... Read more

This lecture is the second in a three part series in partnership with the Wheeler Centre, entitled The Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights. Bookings Essential.   In this illustrated lecture, Kiernan identifies powerful connections and patterns that for nearly every case of genocide gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and ... Read more

The 3rd Dr Jan Randa Conference in Holocaust and Genocide studies brings together distinguished keynote scholars, academics and postgraduate students from around the world. Speakers include Ben Kiernan, Christina Twomey, Richard Bessel and Jay Winter. Understanding Genocide in the Shadow of the Holocaust Histories and memories of the Holocaust have often been woven together into a paradigm that shapes how we understand ... Read more

Food has been not only important in Jewish culture and history. It has been central to the Jews’ ideas about themselves and about others, as well as their social and communal practices. Historically Jewish communities functioned around the sanctity of food and communal control. How did migration to the United States challenge and expand Jewish ... Read more

Peddlers, ordinary, unsung, and usually anonymous, Jewish men made up the foot soldiers of the great Jewish migration, spanning the long era from the end of the eighteenth century into the early twentieth. Jews from Central and Eastern Europe as well as the Islamic lands left their homes for a series of new world –the ... Read more

Beginning in the 1930s, Jewish photographers established a new mode of American street photography, the origins of what would be called the New York School. Mostly working-class young people, some not yet out of high school, they produced a striking cultural efflorescence. Many were attracted by progressive politics. These neophytes rejected standard representations of New ... Read more

Whether they came from Sioux Falls, South Dakota or the Bronx, New York, over half a million Jews entered the United States’ armed forces during the Second World War. Uprooted from their working- and middle-class neighborhoods, they joined every branch of the military and saw action on all fronts. Moore’s lecture will explore issues of ... Read more

This lecture reviews the long-running debate among historians over Hitler’s role in the decision-making process that led to the Final Solution.  With particular emphasis on documents that came to light after the fall of communism and the opening of East European archives in 1989, this lecture will argue for two incremental decision-making processes, the first ... Read more

This lecture looks first at how scholars in the past have tried to explain perpetrator motivation, culminating in the so-called “Goldhagen controversy.”  It then examines both new social-psychological insights that have emerged and new empirical evidence that has been uncovered since the 1990s. The Dr Jan Randa Lectures for 2013 is a four-part series by Christopher ... Read more

This lecture examines the complexities of survivor testimony as a form of historical evidence.  Through a case study of the Starachowice factory slave labor camps based almost entirely on survivor testimonies, it seeks to demonstrate how important aspects and episodes of the Holocaust that would otherwise be lost to history can be reconstructed through the ... Read more

Through the autobiographical lens of my own personal experience as an expert witness in the second trial of Ernst Zündel in Toronto in 1988 and the trial of David Irving’s libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin in London in 2000, this lecture examines both the contrasting aspects of each trial as well as the ... Read more