Peter A Allard School of Law

The Holocaust in Ukraine: Violence, Gender and Memory

Event Description:

The Holocaust Education Committee of the UBC Department of History is pleased to invite you to the Rudolf Vrba Memorial Lecture for 2023, co-sponsored by the Department of History, the Peter A. Allard School of Law, and the Rudolf Vrba Memorial Lecture fund.

The Holocaust is a vivid manifestation of systemic violence, a "reference" genocide, which led to the development in 1948 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. During the Second World War, about one and a half million Jews died on the territory of Ukraine. They were killed in various ways, but most  were shot. Based on the analysis of video testimonies of Jewish survivors from the USC Shoah Foundation, Dr. Nataliia Ivchyk will talk about the experience of Jewish people in one of the administrative units created by the Nazis, the General District of Volhynia and Podilia. In particular, she will discuss the systemic violence of the Holocaust; the evolution of gender roles in Jewish families during the Holocaust; and gender-based violence and sexual violence. Dr. Ivcyhk will conclude with a discussion of the place of the Holocaust in the collective memory of modern-day Ukraine.

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Speaker:
Nataliia Ivchyk
Dr. Nataliia Ivchyk

Nataliia Ivchyk is a Holocaust scholar active in the field of public history and memory politics. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Sciences at Rivne State University for the Humanities in her hometown of Rivne, Ukraine. Together with Maksym Gon (a history professor currently serving in the Ukrainian Army) and Petro Dolhanov, Nataliia co-founded and is a project manager of NGO Mnemonic, an organization devoted to citizenship education and the memory of the multicultural history of the Rivne region. In 2022, NGO Mnemonics was awarded the History of National Socialism prize by The Munich Documentation Center for its work in documenting the violent history of the twentieth century.

The committee responsible for the Vrba Memorial Lecture joined with the Department of History, the Allard School of Law and other partners on and off campus to bring Dr. Ivchyk from Ukraine to UBC for one year.

About the Lecture Series

The Rudolf Vrba Memorial Lecture honours the memory of Dr. Rudolf Vrba, who was a distinguished medical researcher and professor of pharmacology at UBC for many decades before his death in 2006. Rudolf Vrba also played a critical role in the history of the Holocaust as one of only five Jewish prisoners who ever escaped from Auschwitz. The report written by Rudolf Vrba and his fellow-prisoner Alfred Wetzler following their escape in 1944 was the first eyewitness report about what was happening inside Auschwitz. It is considered a foundational document for understanding the facts about the Holocaust.

For further information

Please contact the chair of the Holocaust Education Committee, Dr. Richard Menkis, menkis@mail.ubc.ca.

 


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