The 26th Annual Holocaust and Other Genocides Lecture Series

October-November 2003
Theme: Justice, Redress, and Restitution

In 1979 then University Chaplain, now emeritus, Beverly Asbury organized what would prove to be the first of the now longest continuous Holocaust Lecture Series at any American university. Under the rubric "Holocaust: Jewish and Christian Perspectives," prominent theologians and philosophers Irving Greenberg, Emil Fackenheim, and Franklin H. Littel as well as one of the leading survivor memoirists, Gerda Klein, spoke to the greater Vanderbilt community.

Since then our ongoing examination of ourselves and our society in the wake of the Holocaust has brought such notable figures as Elie Wiesel, Simon Wiesenthal, Terrence des Pres, Lawrence Langer, Nechama Tec, and Deborah Lipstadt, among many others, to campus and has addressed such themes as ethics, resistance, law, gender, art, and memory. In a world in which we still find racial and religious persecution and even genocide, more than half a century since the Holocaust, the twenty-sixth anniversary of the series is an appropriate time to reflect on difficult and unresolved issues of justice and redress.

The difficulty of doing justice reflects the enormity of the crime. By this standard, we are still struggling to take the measure of the Holocaust. Almost sixty years after the end of World War II, we continue to tax our ethical, legal, financial, political, and artistic resources in an effort to redress the crimes of the Holocaust and make whole the victims of Nazi atrocities. In this twenty-sixth annual Vanderbilt University Holocaust Lecture Series, we focus our attention on the complex issues of the unfinished business of justice, redress, and restitution for the Holocaust and other genocides. What is the relation of financial restitution and reparation to justice for the victims of the Third Reich? Do we need new forms of law and memory in the wake of state-sponsored brutality, criminality, and denial? Must art respond to genocidal destruction with innovative aesthetic forms and values? Need our moral norms, our institutional practices, even our languages be rebuilt from the ground up if we are to respond adequately to the ethical challenge posed by genocide? Even now, more than fifty years later, our predicament remains as uncertain as it was in 1945: how to pay the debt of justice to the victims of the greatest crimes.

2003 Events

October 9, 2003
Speaker: Stuart E. Eizenstat
Title: IMPERFECT JUSTICE: LOOTED ASSETS, SLAVE LABOR, AND THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF WORLD WAR II
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Flynn Auditorium at the Vanderbilt Law School
Reception: 6:00-7:00 PM, Law School Lobby

October 10-16
Film: BONHOEFFER (USA)
Director: Martin Doblmeier
Year: 2003
Length: 93 minutes
Times: TBA
Location: Belcourt Theatre, 2102 Belcourt Avenue in Hillsboro Village, (615) 383-9140
For further information, call (615) 846-3150

October 14
Title: Panel Discussion of BONHOEFFER
Time: 7pm
Location: Belcourt Theatre, 2102 Belcourt Avenue in Hillsboro Village, (615) 383-9140

October 26, 2003
Speaker: Jerry Silverman
Title: THE UNDYING FLAME: BALLADS AND SONGS OF THE HOLOCAUST
Time: 7:30 PM
Location: Schulman Center Sanctuary

October 27-28, 2003
Film: ARARAT (Canada)
Director: Atom Egoyan
Year: 2002
Length: 115 minutes
Times: 7:00 PM and 9:30 PM
Location: Sarratt Cinema

October 30, 2003
Speaker: Atom Egoyan
Title: IN OTHER WORDS: POETIC LICENSE AND THE INCARNATION OF HISTORY
Time: 7:30 PM
Location: Wilson 126

November 10, 2003
Film: LIEBE PERLA (Israel/Germany)
Director: Shahar Rozen
Year: 1999
Length: 55 minutes
Times: 7:00 PM and 8:30 PM
Location: Sarratt Cinema

November 11, 2003
Speaker: Lawrence Douglas, Associate Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, Amherst College
Title: THE LAW AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF HOLOCAUST MEMORY
Time: 7:30 PM
Location: Wilson 126

November 20, 2003
Speaker: Arthur L. Caplan, Chair, Department of Medical Ethics and Emanuel and
Robert Hart Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Title: THE MORALITY OF EVIL: LESSONS FROM NAZI MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS
Time: 7:30 PM
Location: Wilson 126

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Copyright © 2003, Vanderbilt University. Last Modified: Oct. 1, 2003. For more information: 615-322-2457.