“New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison” 

The conference will be held November 4-7, 2018 at Doheny Library at USC and at Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades. The conference is co-organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and the USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life, and is presented in cooperation with the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., and the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University Berlin, Germany.

The interdisciplinary conference, which convenes 80 years after the violent pogrom of 1938 against the Jews in Nazi Germany, aims to gather the most recent scholarship on the event, its reverberations, and its legacy. 22 international scholars from a variety of disciplines (History, Cultural Studies, Philosophy and Religion, Jewish Studies, Literature, Political Science, and French) will gather to share new research about the event itself, the avenues through which information about the event traveled throughout the world, individual and group reactions to Kristallnacht around the world, and what we can learn about Kristallnacht and about pogroms in general when we put them into comparison with each other, even if they happen(ed) in vastly different geographic or temporal contexts. The conference will help situate the anti-Jewish pogrom in its close historical context, as well as in its place in world history.

Conference Program

Monday, November 5, 2018

USC, Main Campus, Doheny Memorial Library, Room 240

9:30 am – 9:40 am

Welcoming Remarks

Wolf Gruner, Founding Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Steve Ross, Director of the USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life, Stephen Smith, Finci-Viterbi Executive Director, USC Shoah Foundation

9:40 am – 10:20 am

Introductory Panel

Chair: Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Center for Research on Anti-Semitism, Technical University Berlin, History)

François Guesnet (University College, London, History), Ulrich Baumann (Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, History)

Kristallnacht – Pogrom or State Terror? A Terminological Reflection

10:20 am – 12:20 pm

The Pogrom

Chair: Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Center for Research on Anti-Semitism, Technical University Berlin, History)

Mary Fulbrook (University College, London, German History)

Bystanders to Violence

Maximilian Strnad (Town Archive, City of Munich, History)

A Question of Gender! Spaces of Violence and Reactions to Kristallnacht in Jewish-Gentile Families     

Wolf Gruner (University of Southern California, Los Angeles,  Jewish Studies and History)

Mass Attack on Privacy and Stories of Resistance

Lunch break

1:50 pm – 3:10 pm

Protest in Germany and Abroad

Chair: Shira Klein (Chapman University, Los Angeles, History)

Michael Geheran (United States Military Academy, West Point, History)

Between Defiance and Conformity: The Case of Julius K.

Dov Ber Kotlerman (Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Literature)

From the Manila Protest to Philippine Visas

Coffee break

3:40 pm – 5:00 pm

Reactions in Print Media

Chair: Wendy Lower (Claremont McKenna College and Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Norman Domeier (University of Stuttgart, History)

The “Reichskristallnacht” and the American Journalists in Nazi Germany

Paul Moore (University of Leicester, UK, Modern European History)

“La Nuit de Cristal”: The November Pogrom as a Transnational Media Moment

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

USC, Main Campus, Doheny Memorial Library, Room 240

9:30 am – 11:30 am

Reactions in the Jewish Press

Chair: Marla Stone (Occidental College, Los Angeles, History)

Anne-Christin Klotz (Freie Universität Berlin, Eastern European History)

The Warsaw Yiddish Press and the Persecution of Jews in the Third Reich – Polish-Jewish Journalists and the Production of Knowledge during the Rise of National Socialism in 1933 and the November Pogroms in 1938, A Comparative Analysis

Jeffrey Koerber (Chapman University, Los Angeles, History)

What Did Soviet Jews Make of Kristallnacht?

Kiril Feferman (Ariel University, Israel, History)

“Anti-Jewish excesses in response to von Rath’s assassination”: Public responses of the Jewish Community in Japan-controlled Harbin to the Kristallnacht

Coffee break

12:00 pm – 1:20 pm

Reactions in Audiovisual Media

Chair: Michael Renov (University of Southern California, Cinema & Media Studies)

Stephanie Seul (University of Bremen, Cultural Studies)

‘The Germans prefer anti-Jewish propaganda’: Reporting (?) Kristallnacht and its Aftermath in the BBC German-language Broadcasts during 1938-1939

Lawrence Baron (San Diego State University, Modern Jewish History)

Kristallnacht in Film: From Reportage to Reenactments, 1938-1948

Lunch break

3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Reactions in Jewish Communities

Chair: Paul Lerner (University of Southern California, History)

Hasia Diner (New York University, American Jewish History)

1938: A Moment of Reckoning for American Jews

Steven Ross (University of Southern California, History)

The Ambiguous Legacy of Kristallnacht: Nazis, Resistors and Anti-Semitism in 1930s-1940s Los Angeles

Gershon Greenberg (American University, Washington, DC., Philosophy and Religion)

Orthodox Jewish Religious Responses to Kristallnacht: Globally Considered

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Villa Aurora, Pacific Palisades

Shuttle leaves hotel at 8:15 am, arrives at 9:45 am

9:45 am – 10:15 am

Coffee and pastries

10:15 am – 12:15 pm

The Event and Beyond

Chair: Jared McBride (University of California Los Angeles, History)

Jason Lustig (Harvard University, Jewish Studies)

Out of the Ashes: Jewish Community Records and Archives after Kristallnacht

Alexander Walther (Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena, History)

Jewish Anti-Fascism? ‘Kristallnacht’ Remembrance in the GDR Between Propaganda and Jewish Self-Assertion

Mark Wolfgram (McGill University, Political Science)

From the Visual to the Textual: How Nazi Control of the Visual Record of Kristallnacht Shaped the Postwar Narrative

Lunch break

1:15 pm – 3:15 pm

Comparative Perspectives

Chair: Brenda Stevenson (University of California Los Angeles, History)

Baijayanti Roy (University of Frankfurt, History)

The Long Shadow of Reichskristallnacht on the ‘Gujarat Pogrom’ in India: A Comparative Analysis

Nathalie Segeral (University of Hawaii-Manoa, French)

Reclaiming Kristallnacht: The Nazi Pogrom as Transnational Trope in Narratives of the Rwandan Genocide and the Migrants Crisis

Liat Steir-Livny (Sapir Academic College & The Open University, Israel, Cultural Studies)

Satiric Comparisons between Kristallnacht and a Violent Demonstration in Southern Tel-Aviv against Refugees from Africa in Israeli Social Media

3:15 pm – 4:15 pm

Concluding Discussion 

Shuttle back to hotel leaves at 5:00 pm.

The conference website, with conference schedule and registration form, will be launching soon. Click here to be notified when registration opens.