"How Antisemitism, Anti-Black Racism and Misogyny are Linked" with Doris Bergen (University of Toronto)

What is the relationship between anti-Black racism, antisemitism, sexism and Nazism? Why did the white supremacists who marched at Charlottesville in 2017 to protest removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee carry swastika flags and shout, "Jews will not replace us?" Why did the number of lynchings in the United States spike in 1933, the year Hitler came to power in Germany? Howard University professor Kelly Miller noted a "striking analogy" between "race prejudice" against Black people in America and Jews in Germany, and other African American and Caribbean observers at the time expressed similar views. Why have their insights been largely forgotten? This talk addresses these and other questions by looking back at the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust and analyzing connections to our own times.

Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees. 

About the speaker

Doris L. Bergen is the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on issues of religion, gender and ethnicity in the Holocaust and World War Il and comparatively in other cases of extreme violence. She is the author of six books, most recently "Between God and Hitler: Military Chaplains in Nazi Germany" (Cambridge, 2023). Bergen has held international grants and fellowships, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the German Marshall Fund, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, DAAD: German Academic Exchange Service and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She is a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.