Free public lecture on Jewish survivors of the Holocaust at the University of Leicester on Tuesday 7 November

Annual Aubrey Newman Lecture at the University of Leicester to take place on Tuesday 7 November

LEICESTER, 06-Nov-2017 — /EuropaWire/ — Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and their rescuers are the focus of a free public lecture taking place at the University of Leicester on Tuesday 7 November.

The lecture, entitled ‘What We Do Not Talk About: Jewish Survivors and their Rescuers in Poland during the Holocaust’, is the 12^th annual Aubrey Newman Lecture organised by the University of Leicester’s Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

The lecture will question what social and cultural challenges rescuers of Jews faced in Poland during the war and in the early post-war period and how the rescuers perceived themselves, their wartime rescue actions, and their status within their local communities.

This year’s Aubrey Newman Lecture discusses these questions and examines how Polish historians dealt with the topic of rescuers before and after their country’s political transformation in 1989.

Dr Svenja Bethke, from the University of Leicester’s Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, said: “This event represents an exciting opportunity to hear from a leading historian of Eastern European and Jewish history about her cutting-edge research into the Holocaust and its aftermath in Poland.

“Dr Michlic’s research draws upon a broad range of sources, largely unexplored before, both from Polish rescuers and survivors. By integrating the perspectives of these two groups into the broader history of the Holocaust, she presents a multi-layered picture of the dynamics of everyday life in German-occupied Poland.

“In a contemporary context in which nationalist political authorities in Poland are increasingly attempting to prevent critical writing on the Holocaust in order to present a glorious picture of the Polish national past, Michlic’s aim to question overly simplistic understandings of this period could not be more timely.”

Delivered by Dr Joanna Beata Michlic (UCL), ‘What We Do Not Talk About: Jewish Survivors and their Rescuers in Poland during the Holocaust’ takes place on Tuesday 7 November 2017 in Ken Edwards Lecture Theatre 2 at the University of Leicester.

Beginning at 5.30pm, Dr Michlic will consider new approaches to the history of rescuers and call for a new approach to paint a sophisticated, nuanced and comprehensive portrayal of rescuers that avoids the more ‘black and white’ ideological approaches of the past.

ENDS

Notes to editors:

For more information contact Dr Svenja Bethke on email sb744@le.ac.uk

SOURCE: University of Leicester

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