The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed
Wendy Lower is the John K. Roth Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College and directs the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College. She also chairs the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and has published several books on the Holocaust in Ukraine including Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (2005), and is co-editor (with Ray Brandon) of Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization (2008). Her work on gender and the Holocaust, Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Award and has been translated into 23 lanuages. Lower's The Ravine: A Family, A Photograph, A Holocaust Massacre Revealed (2021) received the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category and was short-listed for the Wingate Prize and long-listed for a PEN. In 2025 she received a fellowship from the Swedish Research Council and Lund University to complete her new co-authored study (with Professor Jonathan Petropoulos) on Himmler’s last days and the historical fates of genocidaires. Lower will compare iconic photos of the Holocaust with those of the Armenian genocide to raise new questions about the role of witnesses and the rise of the humanitarian photographer in the 20th century.
Professor Lower's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College and is the Center’s annual lecture dedicated to Armenian Studies.