Wolf Gruner to Give Keynote and Present New Book in Europe

Wolf Gruner, director of USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, is in Oxford, Frankfurt and Berlin this week speaking about his research and his latest book on the persecution of Jews in Bohemia and Moravia during the Holocaust.

Earlier today, Gruner gave a lecture at the Fritz-Bauer Institute at Goethe University in Frankfurt on his new book The Persecution of Jews in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: Local Initiatives, Central Decisions and Jewish Answers 1939-1945. The book details the anti-Jewish policies put into place by Czech and German authorities in the Bohemia and Moravia protectorate and how this resulted in the radicalization of the persecution of Jews throughout Europe.

Published in October 2016, it received one of the prizes for most outstanding German studies in the humanities and social sciences in 2017 by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, the VG WORT and the German Foreign Office, dedicated to fund a translation into English.

On Friday, June 16, Gruner will give the keynote presentation at a one-day symposium at Oxford University’s School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, Social Sciences Division, titled “Violence, Atrocity and Conflict: New Research from East Asia in Comparative Perspective with Europe.”

Gruner’s presentation is titled “A Twisted Road: the History of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, its European Origin and its Comparative Future.” Other speakers at the symposium, including scholars from The College of Idaho, Wuhan University, Thammasat University, Australian National University and Oxford, will focus on atrocities in 18th century China, the Sino-Japanese War, and post-war ideas of economic and political change in Asia.

Gruner will give another presentation about his book on Thursday, June 22, at the Topography of Terrors Foundation in Berlin, co-sponsored by the Center for Antisemitism Research at Technical University of Berlin.