A public lecture will take place at Northumbria
University’s Newcastle campus to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2023.
Each year tens of thousands of activities take place
across the UK to mark Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27th.
During Northumbria’s Holocaust Memorial Day Lecture,
taking place on January 26th, two scholars of the Holocaust will
discuss ‘resistance’ in two Nazi concentration camps - Auschwitz and Janowska,
in Lviv, Ukraine.
Dr Dominic Williams and Dr Waitman Beorn will discuss how prisoners were
able to resist camp regimes that forced them to live and die in extreme
conditions.
Dr Williams, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities at Northumbria, will talk about Auschwitz-Birkenau, especially
the uprising of October 7th, 1944, by members of the Sonderkommando
- the prisoners who were forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria of
Birkenau.
His talk will include how that
uprising came about, how it has been remembered, and the importance that it had
for other prisoners in Auschwitz. He will show how resistance took the form not
only of violent struggle, but also of efforts by members of the Sonderkommando
and others to document the mass murder being carried out in the camp.
“The Sonderkommando left
written records of the atrocities they witnessed and their own efforts to
resist,” said Dr Williams. “At first, they look to have left them unsigned,
perhaps as a precaution in case these documents were found.
“Later, when many had been
killed in the uprising, and it was clear that few of them would survive, they
recorded names - their own, those of their families and those of their
comrades. Knowing that they would die, they wanted to be remembered. Holocaust
Memorial Day gives us the chance to do this.”
Dr. Waitman Beorn, an Assistant Professor in History at
Northumbria, will centre his talk around resistance
at the the Janowska camp
in Lviv.
The camp witnessed a prisoner
uprising in which several Nazi SS guards were killed, and in which many
prisoners managed to escape. Despite being a concentration camp that few have
ever heard of, as many as 80,000 Jews were murdered at Janowska and it was
complicit in the deportation of hundreds of thousands to the extermination centre
at Belzec.
Holocaust remembrance not only includes opportunities to
develop a deeper appreciation of the victims and survivors, but it can inform
our response to the plight of contemporary victims of atrocities today.
Focusing on the humanity of the victims of the Holocaust prompts us to remember
our own humanity, says Dr Beorn.
“I
think it’s important to commemorate the Holocaust because it reminds that while
it was an extraordinary event, it was carried out by ordinary people against
other ordinary people,” he said. “Remembering the Holocaust forces us to
recognise that we are capable of both great good and great evil.
“More recent genocides and
mass atrocities sadly demonstrate that this phenomenon has not been consigned
to history. Holocaust Remembrance Day is about memorialising the loss of
so many to Nazi genocide and a reminder that it is still possible for similar
tragedies to take place today.”
The United Nations General Assembly designated January 27
as an International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the
Holocaust.
On this annual day of commemoration, the UN urges every
member state to honour the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and
millions of other victims of Nazism and to develop educational opportunities to
help prevent future genocides. The 2023 theme for International Holocaust
Remembrance Day is “Home and Belonging.”
For more information about the Holocaust Memorial Day
lecture at Northumbria University and to sign up to the event visit https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/events/2023/01/holocaust-memorial-lecture/
