Rosh Hashanah in Gehinnom: Auschwitz 1944

Short paper presented at Lessons & Legacies, 2018, Wash U, St. Louis. Explores correlations between surge of Holocaust invocation in the U.S. in the 1970s with broader societal and cultural changes of that decade. The issue is also discussed in my On Listening to Holocaust Survivors (1998, 2010).

Personal reflections about the discovery about the fate of my great uncle and his family during the Sho'ah.

MAY GOD REMEMBER Memory and Memorializing in Judaism—Yizkor, Lawrence Hoffman (ed.), 2013

In my paper, I address the following question: What is the work of Auschwitz II and Jedwabne in creating a space for Holocaust memory? Auschwitz has become synonymous with the Shoah. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, museum officials at Auschwitz I and II struggle under the burden of physically maintaining the site as well as meaningfully referencing and representing the various groups of prisoners who suffered and/or died there. The murder of over 900,000 Jewish people at Auschwitz II was anonymous and mechanized. No names were recorded when, daily, train after train arrived and thousands were disappeared, reduced to smoke and ash. Today, the vast site hauntingly demands our attention. “The Role of Auschwitz II and Jedwabne as Sites of Holocaust Memory.” Chapter for Memory, Place and History: Contexts in Transition, Interdisciplinary Research Foundation (IRF) Press, September 2017, 315-330. (Peer reviewed.)

Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2005

Yad Vashem studies

Due to the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus epidemic, we have decided to introduce a new conference format. In November 2020, we will organise eight online sessions instead of a traditional conference. According to this decision we extended the deadline of the Call for Papers until 21 June 2020.

Religions, 2022

Religious Jewish tradition has specific rituals for mourning the loss of a relative. They include receiving visitors during shiva, the recitation of the Kaddish in the first year, and the annual marking of the Yahrzeit. There are also customs for commemorating collective disasters. Foremost among the mare the diminution of joy on specific dates, and setting permanent fast days. Towards the end of World War II, when the extent of the destruction became apparent, initiatives began around the world to process the collective mourning and to perpetuate the disaster in religious settings. Many survivors later joined these initiatives, seeking to establish new customs, out of a deep sense that this was an unprecedented calamity. The growing need to combine private and collective mourning stemmed from an awareness of the psychological and cultural power of private mourning customs. Proposals therefore included the observance of a community Yahrzeit, a collective Jewish shiva, along with a fast for the ages. This article explores the initiatives undertaken between 1944 and 1951—the time when intensive processing was needed for the survivors and the relatives of those who had perished—discussing their motivations, unique characteristics, successes and failures, and the reasons for them.