"Beyond Anne Frank: Jews and non-Jews in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands (1940-1945)" A Talk by Jan Burzlaff (Harvard)

Department: Jewish Studies

Date and Time: May 26, 2021 | 12:00 PM-1:00 PM

Event Location: Zoom

Event Details

Please join us on Wednesday, May 26, 2021 at 12:00 PM PST for a talk titled "Beyond Anne Frank: Jews and non-Jews in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands (1940-1945)" by Jan Burzlaff (Harvard) with a response from Prof. Jeff Kopstein (UC Irvine).

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The blossoming field of lived experiences during the Holocaust has neglected to take a closer look at Western Europe. Through the first systematic analysis of 500 Jewish testimonies that move us beyond the notorious case of Anne Frank and her family, this talk paints a fresh picture of Jewish culture and the Nazi persecution in the occupied Netherlands. Shifting the focus away from heated debates about ‘knowledge’ of the Holocaust towards wartime social interactions, this presentation tackles non-Jews’ civil disobedience, the country's polarization, and small gestures of support towards Jews in the Netherlands. Ultimately, this talk calls for more studies of Jews’ perceptions of Gentiles, the Dutch case within Nazi Europe, and comparative histories of Dutch-Jewish culture.

Jan Burzlaff is the William A. Ackman Fellow for Holocaust Studies at Harvard University. A former fellow at the École Normale Superieure, Paris, and the 2016–17 Jane Eliza Procter Fellow at Princeton University, Burzlaff's dissertation is a transnational history of Jewish survival during the Holocaust, with additional interests in interdisciplinary dialogues with the social sciences, visual and spatial histories, comparative genocide, social histories of violence, and politics during the 20th century. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Shofar, the Journal of Contemporary History, the Journal of Genocide Research, the Historical Journal, Yad Vashem Studies, and Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

This event is presented by UCI Center for Jewish Studies.