Event to explore new insights into Jewish Holocaust survivors and their rescuers

Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and their rescuers are the focus of a free public lecture taking place at our University on Tuesday 7 November.

The lecture, entitled ‘What We Do Not Talk About: Jewish Survivors and their Rescuers in Poland during the Holocaust’, is the 12th annual Aubrey Newman Lecture organised by our Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

The lecture will question what social and cultural challenges rescuers of Jews faced in Poland during the war and in the early post-war period and how the rescuers perceived themselves, their wartime rescue actions, and their status within their local communities.

Dr Svenja Bethke, from our Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, said: “This event represents an exciting opportunity to hear from a leading historian of Eastern European and Jewish history about her cutting-edge research into the Holocaust and its aftermath in Poland."

“Delivered by Dr Joanna Beata Michlic (UCL), ‘What We Do Not Talk About: Jewish Survivors and their Rescuers in Poland during the Holocaust’ takes place on Tuesday 7 November 2017 in Ken Edwards Lecture Theatre 2 at the University of Leicester.

Beginning at 5.30pm, Dr Michlic will consider new approaches to the history of rescuers and call for a new approach to paint a sophisticated, nuanced and comprehensive portrayal of rescuers that avoids the more 'black and white' ideological approaches of the past.