Title: We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence After the Holocaust
Speaker: Hasia Diner
Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, History, New York University

Description: It has become an accepted truth: after World War II, American Jews chose to be silent about the mass murder of millions of their European brothers and sisters at the hands of the Nazis. Hasia Diner shows the assumption of silence to be false. Uncovering a rich and incredibly varied trove of remembrances—in song, literature, liturgy, public display, political activism, and hundreds of other forms—We Remember with Reverence and Love shows that publicly memorializing those who died in the Holocaust arose from a deep and powerful element of Jewish life in postwar America. Not only does she marshal enough evidence to dismantle the idea of American Jewish “forgetfulness,” she brings to life the moving and manifold ways that this widely diverse group paid tribute to the tragedy. --NYU Press

About the speaker: Hasia Diner has built her scholarly career around the study of American Jewish history, American immigration and ethnic history, and the history of American women. She has written about the ways in which American Jews in the early twentieth century reacted to the issue of race and the suffering of African Americans. -Association of American Historians

Sponsor: Program in Jewish Culture & Society (PJCS)
Lecture Series: Krouse Visiting Professor Lecture
Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies