UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, CANADA
May 21–23, 2017
Co-organized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies and the University of Toronto’s Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Chair of Holocaust Studies, this interdisciplinary symposium explores the intersections of religion, ethno-nationalism, fascism, antisemitism, and violence during this period. By analyzing the ways in which religious groups, institutions, and networks engaged political and social upheaval in and beyond Europe, we hope to identify broader patterns that can deepen our understanding of the dynamics shaping the roles of religious actors before and during the Holocaust.
By bringing together scholars, teachers, students, and community members, the Mandel Center’s outreach symposia seek to enrich campus dialogue and forge connections with diverse audiences that will ensure the vitality of Holocaust studies in an increasingly interdisciplinary and multicultural academic landscape. The Mandel Center’s Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust focus on the history of the churches’ response to the Holocaust, the roles of different religious communities during that period, and the ways in which religious institutions, leaders, and theologians have addressed this history and its legacy since 1945.
The Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Chair of Holocaust Studies is located within the Department of History and the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. Its goals are to produce and promote world-class scholarship on the Holocaust, to train undergraduate and especially graduate students in Holocaust Studies, and to connect researchers in Canada with their international counterparts. In keeping with its commitment to making high-quality research widely accessible, the Wolfe Chair welcomes the public at many of its events.
With the exception of the final program on Religion, Ethno-nationalism, and Violence: Probing the Intersections, symposia sessions are closed to the public.
MONDAY, MAY 22
SESSION 1: TRANSNATIONAL RELIGION AND DIASPORA COMMUNITIES
Facilitator: Devi Mays, University of Michigan
Exporting Fascist Ideology to the East: Italian Cultural Activities in Turkey during the Interwar Period
Francesco Pongiluppi, University of Rome
Armenian Genocide: Centennial Debates on Legacies, Memories and Turkish Denial
Burçin Çakır, Glasgow Caledonian University
Not Quite Nazis: Ethno-Religious Nationalism and Germans in South America
John Eicher, German Historical Institute, Washington, DC
Martin Buber’s Position in the Field of German Nationalist Ideology, 1900-1933
Stefan Vogt, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main
SESSION 2: RELIGIOUS LEADERSHIP AND THE ROLE OF CLERGY
Facilitator: Paul Hanebrink, Rutgers University
Patriarch Tikhon, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Jewish People (1917-1925)
Francesca Silano, University of Toronto
Vatican Responses to the Nazi Persecution of the Catholic Church in Occupied Poland
Jonathan Huener, University of Vermont
A Catholic Religious Community in France vis-à-vis Racial Antisemitism: The Case of the Religious of Our Lady of Sion
Eliot Nidam Orvieto, Yad Vashem
“The Limits of Human Jurisdiction": Protestant Theologies of Law, War Crimes Trials, and Human Rights in Occupied Germany, 1945-1950
Brandon Bloch, Harvard University
SESSION 3: MOBILIZATION OF RELIGION FOR NATIONAL AND POLITICAL PROJECTS
Facilitator: Milena Methodieva, University of Toronto
Sacred Jihad and National Revolution in Palestine: Conceptions of Religion and Nationality in the Letters of ‘Arif’ Abd al-Raziq, 1938-1939
Roy Marom, University of Haifa
Antisemitism and the Rome-Berlin Axis: The Failed "Blood and Spirit" Project in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany
Peter Staudenmaier, Marquette University
Between God and Nation: Ukrainian Greek Catholics and the Holocaust
Kateryna Budz, Independent Researcher, Kyiv, Ukraine
The Catholic Church and the Ustasha Regime in Croatia (1941-1945)
Irina Ognyanova, Institute of Balkan Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
TUESDAY, MAY 24
SESSION 4: RELIGION AND VIOLENCE
Facilitator: Christhard Hoffmann, University of Bergen
Religion, Ethno-nationalism, and Genocidal Violence in Chełm, 1939-1944
Jason Tingler, Clark University
Buddhism and Ethno-Nationalism of Japan during the Second World War
Ranjana Mukhapadhyaya, University of Delhi
The "Christian" Transnistria: Evangelization through Violence in the Romanian Orthodox Exarchate from Southern Ukraine (1941-1944)
Ionut Biliuta, Gheorghe Sincai Institute for Social Sciences and the Humanities, Romanian Academy
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
Moderator: Kevin Spicer, Stonehill College
Paul Hanebrink, Rutgers University
Christhard Hoffmann, University of Bergen
Devi Mays, University of Michigan
Milena Methodieva, University of Toronto
4:30 P.M. PUBLIC EVENT: RELIGION, ETHNO-NATIONALISM, AND VIOLENCE: PROBING THE INTERSECTIONS
A Conversation with Susannah Heschel (Dartmouth College) and Victoria Barnett, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Moderator: Doris Bergen, University of Toronto
Campbell Room, Munk School of International Affairs
6:00 p.m. Reception (open to all guests at the event).
Symposium chairs are Victoria Barnett, Director of the Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Doris Bergen, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Toronto; and Kevin P. Spicer, C.S.C., James J. Kenneally Professor of History, Stonehill College. This symposium is made possible by the generous support of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, the Department of History, the Hoffberger Family Foundation, and the Joint Initiative in German and European Studies at the University of Toronto.
For more information please click "Further Official Information" below.