The Event and Beyond
Chair: Jean-Marc Dreyfus (Manchester University, 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”
Mark A. Wolfgram (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison 2001) is a lecturer in political science at McGill University. His previous book, “Getting History Right:” East and West German Collective Memories of the Holocaust and War was published by Bucknell University Press in 2011. His forthcoming book, Antigone’s Ghosts: The Long Legacy of War and Genocide in Five Countries, will also appear with Bucknell University Press in late 2018. The book combines political and cultural analysis of how Germany, Japan, Spain, Yugoslavia and Turkey have dealt with their difficult histories in the context of the 20th century. He is a member of the international steering committee for the Historical Dialogues, Justice and Memory Network, which organizes an annual international conference on historical dialogues and how societies deal with their violent histories. He has received fellowship awards from the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, the Joan Shorenstein Center at Harvard University, and the German Academic Exchange Service.
Alexander Walther is a Ph.D. student at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. He studied history and English in a teacher’s training course at Friedrich Schiller University, receiving his First State Exam in 2014. In his thesis, he analysed the memoirs of former Yugoslavian refugees who had fled to Germany in the 1990s war. From 2010-2015 he worked as a student and research assistant at Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena. Since 2015 he has worked as a research associate at Europäisches Kolleg Jena. Das 20. Jahrhundert und seine Repräsentationen and as a doctoral candidate at Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. His dissertation project investigates the multi-faceted forms of commemoration practices and representations of the Shoah within the GDR’s culture of remembrance, dominated by anti-fascism.
Jason Lustig is a Harry Starr Fellow in Judaica at Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies and the Gerald& Westheimer Early Career Fellow at the Leo Baeck Institute. Dr. Lustig received his Ph.D. from the UCLA Department of History in 2017, and his research focuses on the history of Jewish archives in Germany, the United States, and Israel/Palestine. His work has appeared in the Journal of Contemporary History and American Jewish History, and he is currently preparing a book manuscript titled A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture. He also is the creator and host of the Jewish History Matters podcast (www.jewishhistory.fm).