By the view Staff Article published November 1, 2005
Claudia Koonz, professor of history at Duke University, will discuss “Jewry in Nazi Historical Scholarship” during the UVM Center for Holocaust Studies Hilberg Lecture on Nov. 2 at 8 p.m. in Billings Campus Center Theater.
Raul Hilberg's pathbreaking and painstaking research into transportation and government networks shattered the belief that only a few powerful Nazis had been responsible for the Holocaust. How did the individuals in these networks perceive their terrible work? Drawing on her most recent reseach, Koonz suggests that part of the answer lies in the popular racial science that circulated in professional journals, textbooks, cartoons and mass media. Rather than point to the fraudulence of these materials to our eyes, Koonz asks how this knowledge became credible in the eyes of ordinary Germans in the 1930s.
Koonz is the author of the award-winning Mothers in the Fatherland (1987) and most recently of The Nazi Conscience (2003). Her research interests include how ethnic fears are formed both historically and in contemporary society. For more information on Koonz, visit Claudia Koonz.
