Lessons in Resilience from the Holocaust and Genocide with Wolf Gruner: Resisters. How Ordinary Jews fought Persecution in Hitler’s Germany

Join us on this transformative journey; let this series serve as your source of empowerment, inspiring our community to find their own light within the encompassing shadows.

Wolf Gruner:
Resisters. How Ordinary Jews fought Persecution in Hitler’s Germany

Wolf Gruner

Wolf Gruner holds the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies, is Professor of History at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles since 2008 and the Founding Director of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research (previously USC Dornsife Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research) since 2014.

He is a specialist in the history of the Holocaust and in comparative genocide studies. He received his PhD in History from the Technical University Berlin in 1994 as well as his Habilitation in 2006. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, Yad Vashem Jerusalem, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Women’s Christian University Tokyo, and the Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg, as well as the Desmond E. Lee Visiting Professor for Global Awareness at Webster University in St. Louis.

He is an appointed member of the Academic Committee of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (since 2017), the executive committee of the Consortium of Higher Education Centers of Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies (since 2018), the International Academic Advisory board of the Center for the Research on the Holocaust in Germany at Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research, Jerusalem (since 2012), and the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Genocide Research (since 2010).

He is the author of ten books on the Holocaust, among them Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis. Economic Needs and Nazi Racial Aims with Cambridge University Press (2006). He also published Parias de la Patria“. El mito de la liberación de los indígenas en la República de Bolivia 1825-1890 in Spanish with Plural Editores 2015. His 2016 prizewinning German book was published in 2019 as The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia. Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses with Berghahn in English, as well as in Czech, and is forthcoming in Hebrew.

He coedited four books, including Resisting Persecution. Jews and Their Petitions during the Holocaust (Berghahn 2020), New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison (Purdue UP 2019), and The Greater German Reich and the Jews. Nazi Persecution Policies in the Annexed Territories 1935-1945 (Berghahn 2015).

His new book Resisters. How Ordinary Jews fought Persecution in Hitler’s Germany (Yale University Press 2023) is written for a wider audience and features the life stories of five Jewish men and women who resisted in different ways against persecution in Nazi Germany. By discussing many of such courageous acts, the book demonstrates the wide range of Jewish resistance in Nazi Germany, challenges the myth of Jewish passivity and illuminates individual Jewish agency during the Holocaust.

Tali Nates

Tali Nates is the founder and director of the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre (JHGC) and Chair of the South African Holocaust & Genocide Foundation (SAHGF). She is a historian who lectures internationally on Holocaust and genocide education, memory, reconciliation, and human rights. Born to a family of Holocaust survivors, her father and uncle were saved by Oskar Schindler. Tali has been involved in the creation and production of dozens of documentary films, published many articles and contributed chapters to different books among them God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors (2015), Remembering The Holocaust in Educational Settings (2018), Conceptualizing Mass Violence, Representations, Recollections, and Reinterpretations (2021) and The Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism (2023).

In 2021 she was part of the 12-member Expert Group of the Malmö Forum, serving in an advisory capacity to the Secretariat of the Malmö Forum on their programme on Holocaust remembrance, education and actions to combat antisemitism. Tali serves on many Advisory and Academic Boards including that of the Contested Histories Initiative, the Interdisciplinary Academic Journal of Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center and the Academic Advisory Group of the School of Social and Health Sciences, Monash University (IIEMSA), South Africa.

In 2010, Tali was chosen as one of the top 100 newsworthy and noteworthy women in

South Africa by the Mail & Guardian newspaper and won many awards including the Kia Community Service Award (South Africa, 2015), the Gratias Agit Award (2020, Czech Republic), the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award (2021) and the Goethe Medal (2022, Germany).

In the midst of uncertainty and shadows, our series on resistance stands as a beacon of hope.

Over the course of our 8-part series, we aim to shed light on the stories of individuals and communities courageously facing prevailing challenges. Our mission is to create a space where narratives of resilience take center stage, unveiling the indomitable strength of the human spirit in adversity.

Thank you to our Partner:

Future Events in this Series:

• September 25, 2024 – Asya Darbinyan: Chhange and Holocaust Education
• October 23, 2024 – Paul Lowe: Capturing the Siege of Sarajevo (Tentative)
• November 20, 2024 – Sarah Brown, PhD: Women as Perpetrators and Rescuers (Tentative)