Survivors – Politics and Semantics of a Concept

Survivors – Politics and Semantics of a Concept

Veranstalter
Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg; and Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung; in co-operation with Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Instituts in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
Veranstaltungsort
Technische Universität Berlin, Room H-3005, Straße des 17. Juni 135
Ort
Berlin
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
19.11.2014 - 21.11.2014
Deadline
12.11.2014
Von
Alina Bothe

The survivor has become a prominent figure and a key concept in history, literary studies and political thought. But who is a survivor? And, more precisely, who is a survivor of the Shoah? The international workshop “Survivors - Politics and Semantics of a Concept” will deal with various approaches and definitions of the term survivor. A complex conceptional history will be discussed, spanning from the immediate postwar period to the present. Topics to be raised include different theoretical frameworks by philosophers, writers and historians as well as the ongoing discussions of restitution and moral responsibility.

If you would like to attend the keynote lecture by Atina Grossmann and/or particpate in the workshop, please
send an email to Alina Bothe: a.bothe@zentrum-juedische-studien.de by 12 November 2014. Please note that the number of seats for the workshop is very limited.

The workshop is generously sponsored by Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Wissenschaftlicher Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Instituts in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Ernst-Reuter-Gesellschaft der Freunde, Förderer & Ehemaligen der Freien Universität Berlin e.V., and with support of Gender Equality Funding of the Department of History and Cultural Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

Programm

Day I - Wednesday, November 19 2014

18:00 Atina Grossmann (New York/Berlin)
Remapping Death and Survival: Shifting Geographies and Definitions

20:00 Reception

Day II - Thursday, November 20 2014

Opening (09:30-10:00)

Welcome Note by Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Berlin)
Introduction by Alina Bothe and Markus Nesselrodt

Panel 1 (10:00-11:00) Who is a Survivor? (I) Early Postwar Definitions
Chair: Karen Körber (Berlin)

Thomas Rahe (Bergen-Belsen)
Survival and New Beginnings. Jews and Roma in Bergen-Belsen 1945

Katarzyna Person (Warsaw)
Building a Community of Survivors in the Post-War Jewish Honor Courts

Coffee Break (11:00-11:30)

Panel 2 (11:30-13:00) Semantics of Survival

Chair: Micha Brumlik (Berlin)
Adam Stern (Cambridge)
Survival Before Auschwitz: On Rosenzweig and Christianity

Linda Asquith (Nottingham)
“What did you survive?” An Exploration of the Nature of Being a Survivor and the Concept of a Survivor Hierarchy

Zofia Waślicka (Prague)
The Use of the Term “Survivor” in Poland

Lunch Break (13:00-14:30)

Panel 3 (14:30-16:00) Politics of Survival
Chair: Michael Wildt (Berlin)

Susanna Schrafstetter (Vermont)
Hidden Jews as a Sub-group of German Holocaust Survivors

Antoine Burgard (Lyon/Montréal)
“Child to be Placed with a Family who Will Appreciate his Tragic Past”. Early Understandings of Young Survivors and Future Migrants’ Experiences in Immediate Post-War Europe

Benno Nietzel (Bielefeld)
The Jewish Claims Conference and Reparations for Holocaust Survivors 1951-2000

Coffee Break (16:00-16:30)

Panel 4 (16:30-18:00) On Survival in Literature
Chair: Eva Lezzi (Berlin)

Daniel Pedersen (Stockholm)
Surviving through Poetry – The Case of Nelly Sachs

Andree Michaelis (Frankfurt/Oder)
The Survivor as Writer and as Witness or Why Primo Levi Did not Want to Be Called a “Survivor”

Jan Taubitz (Erfurt/Berlin)
From Anne Frank to Amy Bellette: How Philip Roth Anticipated the Memory Boom and the Role of the Survivor

Day III - Friday, November 21 2014

Keynotes (9:00-11:00) Survival Post Migration
Chair: Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Berlin)

Anne Rothe (Detroit)
Survivors Made in America: Intersections of Social Darwinism, Holocaust Memory, and Popular Culture

Noam Zadoff (Bloomington)
Bridging the Abyss? Holocaust Survivors in Israel

Coffee Break (11:00-11:30)

Panel 5 (11.30-13:00) Who is a Survivor? (II) – Responses by Historians
Chair: Gertrud Pickhan (Berlin)

Elisabeth Gallas (Jerusalem)
Framing Holocaust Research in New York – The Role of Survivor Historians in the Aftermath of World War II
 
Julia Menzel (Lüneburg)
Between "Nothing" and "Something". Narratives of Survival in H. G. Adler's Scholarly and Literary Analysis of the Shoah

René Schlott (Potsdam)
The Survivor as a Historian. Raul Hilberg (1926-2007) and the Holocaust Historiography

Lunch Break (13:00-14:30)

Panel 6 (14:30-15:30) Survivors' Movements
Chair: Atina Grossmann (New York/Berlin)

Sebastian Schönemann (Koblenz)
The Name Registry as Testimony: About the Commemorative Function of Survivors‘ Early Tracing Services

Ran Zwigenberg (Penn State)
From the Ashes: Hiroshima, the Holocaust and the Rise of the “Survivor” as a Moral Category

Closing remarks (15:30-16:00)
Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Berlin)

Closing with Coffee (16:00)

Kontakt

Alina Bothe

Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg
Sophienstrasse 22 10178 Berlin
030-2093 66311

a.bothe@zentrum-juedische-studien.de

http://www.zentrum-juedische-studien.de/event/2014-11-19-survivors-politics-and-semantics-of-a-concept/