Jewish History and Theresienstadt: How should we write a history of prisoner society?

Event Description

On November 19, 2024 at 5:00 pm PT, the UBC Department of History and the Holocaust Education Committee are pleased to invite you to “Jewish History and Theresienstadt: How should we write a history of prisoner society?,” a 2024 Rudolf Vrba Memorial Lecture delivered by Dr. Anna Hájková (University of Warwick).

The Rudolf Vrba Memorial Lecture honours the memory of Dr. Vrba, who was a professor of pharmacology at UBC for many decades before his death in 2006. Vrba 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.

This is a hybrid event that can be attended either in-person or virtually via Zoom. Please click the link below to register, and be sure to scroll down to read the talk abstract and learn more about Dr. Hájková.

Register

This event is generously supported by the Rudolf Vrba Memorial Lecture Fund. 

Talk Abstract

Where does the Holocaust fit into the wider context of Jewish history is a question that historians and the wider public ponder about often. Rather than an ultimate moment of a long tradition 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 elderly 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 be liberated.

About the Speaker

Dr. Anna Hájková is Reader of Modern European Continental History at the University of Warwick. She is the author of The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt, which was awarded the Irma Rosenberg and Herbert Steiner prizes. Her work focuses on the everyday history of the Holocaust, and thus examines issues such as the Jewish elites, gender and sexuality, and more. Recently, her work is exploring the erasure of certain sexualities from the Holocaust canon. She is also planning a project on leftist intellectuals in Czechoslovakia, Poland and (East Germany) in the years 1930-1970. She is currently a Fellow at the prestigious Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University Michigan. This year’s theme is “Jewish/Queer/Trans”.