STROUM LECTURES 2024 | Friendship and Fear: Life in Imperial Germany and Escape from Nazi Germany

Bartholomew’s map of Europe, 1940. Via the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Libraries.

The Stroum Center for Jewish Studies is proud to announce its 2024 Samuel and Althea Stroum Lecture series, featuring acclaimed Holocaust historian Marion Kaplan.

How did German Jews react emotionally to their country and fellow Germans in the hopeful era after Emancipation (1870-1918), and how did they respond to the devastation of the Nazi period (1933-1945)? Kaplan’s lectures will focus on the complicated feelings of Jews “at home” in Germany and then on the hope and anxiety expressed during their odyssey fleeing Nazi persecution.

Lecture 1. The Complexities of Jewish Friendships: Jews and Non-Jews in Imperial Germany

Tuesday, May 7, 2024, 7:00 — 8:30 p.m., Zoom webinar

Note: Because of an event involving an outside organization planned for this evening, we have shifted this lecture to Zoom webinar format. The registration confirmation email and event reminder will include a webinar link. We fully expect Thursday’s lecture to take place as scheduled in Kane Hall 110.

This talk will focus on grassroots social interactions between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans and, where possible, on the feelings these evoked among Jews — both heartening and discouraging. Antisemitism set limits on Jewish success and also the boundaries against which Jews pushed relentlessly — and often successfully. Although the lecture will focus on Jews, moments of acceptance and animosity provide a vantage point from which to study the diversity of German society in this era as well.

Lecture 2. Hitler’s Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal

Thursday, May 9, 2024, 7:00 — 8:30 p.m., Kane Hall 110

This lecture will focus on the experiences of Jewish refugees as they fled Hitler’s regime, then lived in limbo in Portugal till they could reach safer havens abroad. Drawing attention not only to the social and physical upheavals these refugees experienced, this talk will highlight refugees’ complicated feelings as they fled their homes and histories, relying on the kindness of strangers.

About the speaker

Marion Kaplan is the Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History Emerita at NYU. She is a three-time National Jewish Book Award winner for “The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany” (1991), “Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany” (1998), and “Gender and Jewish History” (with Deborah Dash Moore, 2011) as well as a finalist for “Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosua” (2008). Her other monographs include: “The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany; Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618-1945″ (ed.); and “Hitler’s Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal, 1940-45” (2020).

The Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies are an annual series of talks given by luminaries in the field of Jewish Studies, hosted by Stroum Jewish Studies at the University of Washington. For more than thirty years, through the generosity of Samuel and Althea Stroum, Jewish Studies has been able to bolster public scholarship around Judaism. View highlights from the past thirty years, learn more about the history of the lectures, or view the full archive.

The University of Washington is committed to providing access and accommodation in its services, programs, and activities. To make a request connected to a disability or health condition contact Grace Elizabeth Dy at (206) 543-0138 or jewishst@uw.edu at least 10 days before the event.