More than 25 of the world's leading Holocaust scholars will gather at CMC and Pomona College Feb. 5-7 for the first major conference of CMC's Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights. Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath, will examine what was described by Primo Levi as "the gray zone" in ambiguities and compromise in the Holocaust and years that followed. The conference is free and open to the public, and is co-sponsored by the Holocaust Education Foundation, the Pomona College department of sociology, and the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.
A highlight of the three-day conference is a tribute to renowned historian Professor Raul Hilberg of the University of Vermont, author of the three-volume epic, The Destruction of the European Jews. The works of Hilberg, who began studying the Holocaust in 1948, will be discussed by Professors Christopher Browning and Gerhard Weinberg, both of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
The conference opens with a discussion of Gray Zones, and keynote address on The Sonderkommando by Michael Berenbaum of the University of Judaism, former director of the Shoah Foundation and the United States Holocaust Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Dario Gabbai, an Auschwitz survivor, will provide commentary.
The three-day event features the following discussions:
Mixed Identities in Nazi Europe (Eva Fleischner, Montclair State University; Robert Melson, Purdue University; and Bryan Rigg, American Military University)
Gender and Sexuality During the Third Reich (Geoffrey Giles, University of Florida; Dagmar Herzog, Michigan State University; and Sara Horowitz, York University).
Gray Spaces: The Holocaust and Geography (Martin Dean and Wendy Lower, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and Jean Marc Dreyfus, Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin.)
The Holocaust and Popular Culture (Lynn Rapaport, Pomona College; Gavriel Rosenfeld, Fairfield University; and Ron Smelser, University of Utah)
Business, Denazification, and Justice (Michael Bazyler, Whittier Law School; Peter Hayes, Northwestern University; Jeffrey Lewis, Ohio State University; and Jonathan Petropoulos, Claremont McKenna College).
Religion and Ethics During and After the Holocaust (Victoria Barnett, George Mason University; John Roth, Claremont McKenna College; and Richard Rubenstein, University of Bridgeport).
Ambiguity and Compromise in the Writing of Holocaust History: The Accomplishment of Raul Hilberg.
(Christopher Browning and Gerhard Weinberg, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Professor Hilberg).
To attend, contact The Center for the Study of The Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights, at (909) 607-2891.