Dr. Jan Grabowski, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Ottawa and leading historian of the Holocaust in Poland and Polish–Jewish relations under German occupation, will present this year's Einspruch Lectures on the Holocaust.
Lecture Abstract:
Between 1942 and 1943, the ghettos of Eastern Europe were destroyed in a wave of "liquidation actions" — operations that followed a chillingly consistent pattern from town to town, as if executed from a single script. This lecture examines that pattern: how it was organized, how it repeated itself across hundreds of communities, and what it reveals about the machinery behind it. Close to 20% of all Jews murdered at the time were killed not in the death camps, but in situ — murdered inside or in the proximity of the ghettos in which they lived. The scale of local participation in these killings remains, to this day, largely unknown. And crucially, this violence was not hidden- it happened in public, in daylight, in full view of the surrounding non-Jewish populations. In the aftermath, the value of Jewish life was, in the eyes of many around them, reduced to nothing — and this made possible the Holocaust's final, merciless chapter: the Judenjagd, the hunt for Jewish survivors that continued relentlessly until the war's end.
This is a lunch-and-learn event. Dr. Grabowski will present an additional lecture the previous day at 4pm. To learn more, visit the Einspruch Lectures on the Holocaust page.
Click here to register online; registration is required.
Parking instructions and updates will be emailed to registered guests.
