Vanderbilt University

Quick links:

About the lecture series
About the 2006 lectures
News
Schedule of events
In conjunction
Related links
Acknowledgements

About the 2006 lectures

In 1943/44, Polish Jewish refugee and professor of international law, Raphael Lemkin combined the Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing) to give a name to the ongoing, systematic murder of European Jewry and to recall what had happened to the Armenians a quarter century earlier: genocide. According to Lemkin, genocide is a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups…. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, and dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. When we consider genocide, we usually focus upon the destruction of the lives of the individuals. As Lemkin's definition indicates, murder is only one of the objectives. This year the Vanderbilt Holocaust Lecture Series is devoted to the rest of the definition. The “essential foundations of the life of national groups” are more than the survival of individuals. “Against Cultural Genocide” explores the systematic attempts to destroy the linguistic, artistic, intellectual, and spiritual bases of  communal life and the efforts by members of those victimized groups to resist such destruction. Unless noted, all events are free and open to the public.

Painting by Charlotte Salomon from Life? or Theatre?: A Play With Music, 1940–42, Gouache, 12" x 9". Used by permission of the Charlotte Salomon Foundation.

Schedule of events

(Click on a date to jump to that event)

Genocide in Guatemala: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Beatriz Manz Professor of Ethnic Studies University of California at Berkeley

How could a genocide take place so close to the U.S. and be so hidden? The terror in Guatemala's countryside was devastating, with the expected deep scars for Mayan survivors. Professor Beatriz Manz will reflect on the geopolitics of the early 1980s and on Guatemala's history of repressing the Mayan people and culture. The lecture will present contemporary observations on the devastation from the perspective of one K'iche' Maya village. Beyond her academic accomplishments, Professor Manz has devoted herself to human rights issues, working with such international institutions as UNHCR Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies, the Center for the Americas, and the Department of Spanish and Portugese.

Fateless

Directed by Lajos Koltai

Based on the autobiographical novel of 2002 Nobel Literature Prize winner Imre Kertesz, Fateless unfolds from the naive perspective of a 14-year-old Hungarian Jewish boy as he journeys from occupied Budapest through a series of death and concentration camps—Auschwitz-Birkenau, Zeitz, and Buchenwald—to his liberation and return to a less-than-welcoming Budapest. The audience joins the author, the filmmaker, and their protagonist at the bounds of human experience to confront the question of human freedom or fate. Discussion of the film will follow the screening. Co-sponsored by the Nashville Jewish Film Festival.

A Company of Angels: The Story of Charlotte Salomon

In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre

Minneapolis, MN

A Company of Angels tells the haunting story of a young German Jewish artist, Charlotte Salomon, who in 1940-41, created "Life? Or Theatre?"—a dazzlingly brilliant collection of more than 1,000 autobiographical paintings. In a production combining movement, music, and visual arts, the Minneapolis-based mask-and-puppet-theatre troupe In the Heart of the Beast animates the life story and artistic vision of a passionate young woman caught up in the tragedy of the Holocaust. After the performance Vanderbilt Professor Emeritus Fred Westfield, who was rescued from Germany on a Kindertransport at age 12, will share stories and take questions about Jewish life in the Third Reich and about his current efforts to recover art stolen by the Nazis.

Medical Ethics in the Shadow of the Holocaust:
The Nazi Doctors, Racial Hygiene, Murder, and Genocide

Michael Alan Grodin, M.D. Professor of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights Boston University School of Public Health Professor of Psychiatry, Sociomedical Sciences and Community Medicine Boston University School of Medicine

Physicians played a key role in the Third Reich’s sterilization and euthanasia programs, conducted torturous human experimentation, and ultimately selected who would live and who would die in Auschwitz. Internationally renowned bioethicist and human rights activist Dr. Michael Alan Grodin examines how physician healers turned to torture and murder and what lessons for contemporary medical ethics can be derived. In addition to his extensive scholarly work, including editing of such important collections of bioethics research as The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation and Health and Human Rights: A Reader, Dr. Grodin co-founded Global Lawyers and Physicians: Working Together for Human Rights and co-directs the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights. Co-sponsored by the School of Medicine Dean’s Lecture Series.

Darfur Diaries: Message from Home

Written, produced, and directed by Aisha Bain, Jen Marlowe, and Adam Shapiro

In October 2004, a team of three independent filmmakers—Aisha Bain, Jen Marlowe, and Adam Shapiro—left for the villages of Darfur, Sudan, and the refugee camps of eastern Chad. The crisis there serves as the ongoing narrative in the film, but the focus is on the people who are living through what has been termed a genocide. Through the voices of refugees, displaced persons, and in particular women and children, who are always among the most vulnerable in any conflict situation, this film seeks to provide space for the marginalized victims of atrocities to speak and to engage with the world. One of the filmmakers will be in attendance to discuss the film and the crisis in Darfur. Co-sponsored by Vanderbilt STAND (Students Take Action Now: Darfur).

A Yiddish Writer Survives the Shoah

Chava Rosenfarb Alberta Canada (by way of Lodz, Poland)

The multi-prizewinning Yiddish author Chava Rosenfarb will speak about continuing to write in Yiddish after the Holocaust and the destruction of the Yiddish-speaking cultural community of Eastern Europe. Born in Lodz, Poland, Ms. Rosenfarb survived the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen. She began writing poetry in Yiddish at the age of eight, Her 1979 novel Der Boym fun Lieb received the Itsik Manger Prize, the world’s highest Yiddish literature honor, and has since been translated into English as The Tree of Life. More recently, her translated collection of seven short stories, Survivors, has been published.

While Six Million Died: Cultural Genocide in Poland

Piotr Wróbel Konstanty Reynert Chair of Polish Studies University of Toronto

Beginning with the Third Reich’s invasion from the west on September 1, 1939, joined less than three weeks later by the Soviet Union’s from the east, Poland and its population were subjected to systematic destruction, murder, and persecution that would continue for more than five years. Professor Piotr Wróbel details how the Nazis and Soviets waged their war against Polish culture, destroying its scientific, artistic, and educational institutions and murdering the doctors, professors, writers, and clergy who sustained it. An internationally renowned scholar of Polish-Jewish Studies who has taught at major universities in Warsaw, Berlin, and Oxford, as well as in the U.S., Professor Wrobel has authored numerous articles and books, most recently Nation and History: Polish Historians from the Enlightenment to the Second World War.

For additional information, contact Laurie Eskind, NJFF Director, at (615) 385-2105 or visit the Web site at www.nashvillejff.org

<Back to Chaplain's Main Event Page

Copyright © 2005, Vanderbilt University. Last Modified: Septenber 10, 2006. For more information: 615-322-2457.