The Miller Center for Holocaust Studies will host a lecture series, “Perpetrators and Victims of the ‘Final Solution,’ by Christopher R. Browning, the Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The first talk, “Adolph Hitler and the Decisions for the Final Solution” is Monday, Oct. 10 at 7 p.m. in John Dewey Lounge, Old Mill. All events are free and open to the public.

“Christopher Browning is widely considered to be the premier historian of the Holocaust in the world today,” says Alan Steinweis, professor of history and director of the Center for Holocaust Studies. “Many consider him to be the successor of UVM’s own Raul Hilberg. He is well known beyond the circles of Holocaust studies, in part because he has the ability to produce first-rate scholarship that is accessible to students and lay people.”

In his first presentation, Browning will examine how and when the Nazi regime decided to solve its self-imposed “Jewish Problem,” explain why the issue is important to historians and discuss the course of the debate about the timing and Hitler’s role in the decision-making process.

Browning will also deliver the Raul Hilberg Memorial Lecture, “Revisiting the Holocaust Perpetrators: Why Did They Kill?” on Monday, Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. in John Dewey Lounge, Old Mill.

Here, he will look at a variety of Holocaust perpetrators, including “true believers,” technocrats, bureaucrats and rank-and-file executioners, examining old and new evidence and insights regarding motivation.

The final talk in the series, “Holocaust History and Survivor Testimony: The Case of the Starachowice Factory Slave Labor Camps,” is Monday, Oct. 24 at 7 p.m. in John Dewey Lounge, Old Mill.

This lecture will examine methodological issues and concerns involved in using survivor testimony in writing Holocaust history, and, specifically, will look at what can be learned from the 292 survivors of Starachowice in terms of both German polices and personnel and survival strategies and internal dynamics of the Jewish prisoner community.

Browning received his B.A. from Oberlin College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of eight books including Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution; Collected Memories: Holocaust History and Postwar Testimony; and Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp. He is also co-editor of Every Day Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family’s Correspondence from Poland.  

Twice a senior scholar at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Browning has been a fellow of the Institutes for Advanced Studies in Princeton and Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received Fulbright and Woodrow Wilson Foundation fellowships, among others. Browning has served as an expert witness in “war crimes” trials as well as in two “Holocaust denial” cases.

The Raul Hilberg Memorial Lecture is made possible through a generous gift from Jerold D. Jacobson, Esquire, of New York City, UVM Class of 1962. The other events are underwritten by the Leonard and Carolyn Miller Distinguished Professorship in Holocaust Studies.