[image_spread img_url="https://hist.cms.ar ts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/10/2024-Vrba-DS.png" caption="Ph oto by Václav Jirásek via Anna Hájková." width="website"]
On November 19\, 2024 at 5:00 pm PT\, the UBC Department of History and the History Ho locaust Education Committee are pleased to invite you to “Jewish Hi story and Theresienstadt: How should we write a history of prisoner society ?\,” a 2024 Rudolf Vrba Memorial Lecture delivered by Dr. Anna Háj ková (University of Warwick).
The Rudolf Vrba Memorial Lectur e honours the memory of Dr. Vrba\, who was a professor of pharmaco logy at UBC for many decades before his death in 2006. Vrba played a critic al role in the history of the Holocaust as one of only five Jewish prisoner s who ever escaped from Auschwitz. The report written by Rudolf Vrba and hi s fellow-prisoner Alfred Wetzler following their escape in 1944 was the fir st eyewitness report about what was happening inside Auschwitz.
This is a hybrid event that can be attended either in-person or virtually via Zo om. Please click the link below to register\, and be sure to scroll down to read the talk abstract and learn more about Dr. Hájková.
This ev ent is generously supported by the Rudolf Vrba Memorial Lecture Fund.
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Where does the Holocaust fit into t he wider context of Jewish history is a question that historians and the wi der public ponder about often. Rather than an ultimate moment of a long tra dition of Jewish suffering\, the prisoner society in the ghettos and camps draws our attention to self-organization\, agency\, and decision-making. In Theresienstadt\, a ghetto set up by the Nazis in November 1941\, Jews from Central and Western Europe strove to build a fair administration system\, provide excellent health care\, and put on outstanding cultural events. At the same time\, the ghetto showed stark social hierarchies where the elderl y received starvation food rations and had much higher mortality. Finally\, while everyone deported to Theresienstadt was due to the Jewish heritage\, the prisoner society engendered stark ethnic differences. In her lecture\, Anna Hájková will discuss issues of decision-taking\, social hierarchies\, and the meaning of Jewishness in the Theresienstadt\, the last ghetto to b e liberated.
Dr. Anna Hájková is Reader of Modern European Continental History at the University of W arwick. She is the author of The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Th eresienstadt\, which was awarded the Irma Rosenberg and Herbert Steine r prizes. Her work focuses on the everyday history of the Holocaust\, and t hus examines issues such as the Jewish elites\, gender and sexuality\, and more. Recently\, her work is exploring the erasure of certain sexualities f rom the Holocaust canon. She is also planning a project on leftist intellec tuals in Czechoslovakia\, Poland and (East Germany) in the years 1930-1970. She is currently a Fellow at the prestigious Frankel Institute for Advance d Judaic Studies at the University Michigan. This year’s theme is “Jewish/Q ueer/Trans”.
CATEGORIES:Featured Homepage LOCATION:Peter A. Allard School of Law\, Franklin Lew Forum\, Room 101 GEO:49.260872;-123.113952 URL;VALUE=URI:https://history.ubc.ca/events/event/2024-vrba-anna-hajkova/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://hist.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/10/2024-Vrba-DS.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 DTSTART:20241103T090000 TZNAME:PST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR