A lecture by Emil Kerenji (Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington), in the frame of the seminar on Modern Jewish History organized by the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Charles University, CEFRES and the Prague Center for Jewish Studies.

Due to the new coronavirus travel restrictions, Emil Kerenji is unable to come to Prague as planned. We will offer the presentation by Emil Kerenji as a virtual seminar, taking place over the Internet with the help of a videoconferencing software. It will, however, only take place if enough of you express your interest. Please email Daniela Bartáková at bartakova@mua.cas.cz by March 20.

When: 26 March 2020, from 3 pm – VIRTUAL SEMINAR
Language: English

Abstract

This lecture will discuss the long-term project at the Mandel Center at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, to document Jewish perceptions of, and responses to, the series of events between 1933 and 1946 that today we understand as one unified event, the Holocaust. What were the forms of Jewish persecution as it extended beyond Nazi Germany, and eventually descended into genocide? How were they perceived on the ground, and how did geographical, political, cultural, economic, and class circumstances effect these perceptions? What were the options available to Jewish individuals, groups, institutions, and organizations in extremis, and what were some of the typical reactions? Finally, how does this history and understanding of the Jewish experience influence our understanding of the Holocaust? The lecture will also introduce a digital resource that grew out of this project, Experiencing History

A lecture by Agnes Kelemen (Research Fellow in ERC Consolidator grant UnRef: Unlikely refuge?, Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague) in the frame of the seminar on Modern Jewish History organized by the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences,  Charles University, CEFRES and the Prague Center for Jewish Studies.

Where: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
When: from 5:30 pm to 7 pm
Language: English

Abstract

Interwar Czechoslovakia’s universities and colleges where German was the language of instruction attracted numerous Jewish students who escaped official and unofficial Jewish quotas and antisemitic campus violence in their home countries (f. ex. Hungary, Poland, Romania). They met antisemitism in Czechoslovakia as well, in addition to xenophobia. Yet, when looking back at the Czechoslovak Republic with the knowledge that it became a victim of Nazi Germany, Hungarian Jews marginalized their experiences of anti-Jewish hostility such as the Steinherz-affair (1922-23) and demonstrations for the introduction of a numerus clausus (1929) to the point of ignoring them in their memoirs and praising Czechoslovak amicability. This talk is going to present the curious interplay of Czech nationalism, German institutions of higher education, academic antisemitism, xenophobia and foreign Jewish students through the case study of Hungarian “numerus clausus refugees” who studied in Prague, Brno and Liberec between 1920 and 1938.