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

November 5-7, 2018

Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life and presented in cooperation with the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C., and the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University Berlin, Germany

Held from November 5-7, 2018, the international conference “New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison” convened 80 years after the violent pogrom of 1938 against the Jews in Nazi Germany. It appears to have been the only international academic conference to mark the 80th anniversary of this fateful event of November 1938, during which Nazis and ordinary Germans murdered more than 100 Jews and destroyed thousands of synagogues, Jewish institutions, stores and homes across Germany.

The conference convened 22 junior and senior scholars from five countries (the United States, Germany, Israel, Canada, and the United Kingdom) and various academic disciplines, including history, literature, philosophy and religion, film and cultural studies, French, political science and Jewish studies. They presented on new research about the violent event itself, how the pogrom was discussed and represented around the world, the reactions— resistance, protest, and complicity – in Germany and abroad (including the United States and China) and about global parallels in recent history. Between 60 and 100 people attended the conference daily, with another 400 joining in a livestream.

The conference yielded a book entitled New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison, edited by Wolf Gruner and Steve Ross. Published by Purdue University Press as part of the Casden Annual Review series, the 366-page book is a collection of 15 papers from the 2018 international conference. Full videos of the conference proceedings are available on YouTube and below.