CU Boulder Honors International Holocaust Remembrance Day with Public Lecture and Exhibit
Professor Roemers public lecture, The Holocaust: Then and Now, Spanning the Void, will take place泭Thursday,泭January 26, 7:00-8:30 p.m.,泭in Wittemyer Courtroom (Room 101) in the Wolf Law Building on the CU Boulder campus, one day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27). RSVPs are appreciated as space is limited. Please email泭CUJewishStudies@colorado.edu泭or call 303-492-7143.
The泭Lawyers Without Rights泭exhibit will be on display泭January 5 through January 30, 2017泭in the William A. Wise Law Library in the Wolf Law Building on the CU Boulder campus. The exhibit is sponsored by the William A. Wise Library at the 勛圖厙 of Colorado Law School and the CU Program in Jewish Studies, in conjunction with the American Bar Association and the German Federal Bar.
The Lecture
Professor Roemers lecture is the fifth annual event hosted by CU Boulders Program in Jewish Studies in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The voids and empty spaces in the泭Jewish Museum in Berlin evoke destruction and absence. The泭"Memory Void," one of the symbolic spaces on the grounds of the museum, which was designed by Daniel Libeskind, recalls the Holocaust as well as the泭many lives that might have been had the millions of people who died in the Holocaust lived to see another day. In his lecture, Professor Roemer will explore absences and泭voids泭as important aspects of泭remembrance. An泭awareness is泭apparent in泭communal and family remembrances but often obscured in public commemorations in museums and on泭Holocaust remembrance days. Professor Roemer will泭develop the泭theme of泭absence泭and advance models of remembrance that view泭the Holocaust as a past event within the context of an annihilated future.
Nils Roemer is the Stan and Barbara Rabin Professor in Holocaust Studies and the Director of the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at the 勛圖厙 of Texas at Dallas. He received his PhD in History from Columbia 勛圖厙 in 2000.
In addition to his numerous published articles, Professor Roemer is the author of泭Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Between History and Faith泭(2005) and泭The Story of Worms: German Cities Jewish Memories泭(2010). He is currently finishing a book-length study on Central European Jewish travel writing in the 20th泭century.
Professor Roemer serves as a board member for the Leo Baeck Institute in London and is an external reviewer for multiple scholarly journals. He has received numerous fellowships, including from the Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the 勛圖厙 of Pennsylvania.
The Exhibit
The泭Lawyers Without Rights泭exhibit has been shown in nearly 100 cities across Germany, the United States, and other parts of the world. The idea for the exhibit was conceived in 1998 when an Israeli lawyer asked the regional bar of Berlin for a list of Jewish lawyers whose licenses had been revoked by the Nazi regime.
The regional bar decided not only to research a list of names, but also to try to find out more about the fates behind all those names, said Axel Filges, past president of the German Federal Bar. Some were able to leave the country after the Nazis came into power, but very many of them were incarcerated or murdered. The non-Jewish German lawyers of those days remained silent. They failed miserably, and so did the lawyers organizations. We do not know why.
After the Berlin bar transformed its research into an exhibit, other regional bars began asking whether they could show it and add their own research.
So, like a puzzle, a portrait of the fate of Jewish lawyers in Germany has emerged step by step, Filges said.
For more information about the lecture or exhibit, please visit泭, or call 303-492-7143.