Holocaust and Genocide

Prof. Bauer will discuss why humans are the only living creatures that kill their own kind in large numbers, and the essential similarities and difference between the Holocaust and other genocides.
What do we mean by “genocide”? Why are humans the only living creatures that kill their own kind in huge numbers? What place does the Holocaust occupy in the history of genocides? What are the essential similarities and differences between the Holocaust and other genocides, particularly ones that have occurred during the last hundred years – Armenian, Cambodian, Ethiopian, Rwandan, and Darfurian?

Yehuda Bauer, Professor Emeritus of History and Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the Academic Advisor to Yad Vashem. He was the founding Chair of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at Hebrew University. His publications include From Diplomacy to Resistance, My Brother’s Keeper, Flight and Rescue, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, The Jewish Emergence From Powerlessness, and The Death of the Shtetl.

Sponsored by The Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies, Arts & Lectures, the Dept. of Religious Studies, Congregation B’nai B’rith, Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Hillel, the Dept. of Germanic, Slavic & Semitic Studies, and the Dept. of History.

hm 3/26/12