Atina Grossmann's parents, Erika Busse, seated, and Hans "Hasigro" S. Grossmann, circa 1939. The exact location is unknown, but the photo was taken in Iran, possibly on the outskirts of Tehran. Courtesy of Atina Grossmann
Examine the ambivalent, paradoxical, and diverse experiences, emotions, and memories of Jews who found refuge from Nazism and the Holocaust in India and Iran after 1933. Always shadowed by the emerging European catastrophe, uprooted Jews were precariously privileged as white Europeans in non-western, colonial, or semi-colonial societies. An extensive collection of family correspondence and memorabilia—as well as archival, literary, visual, and oral history sources—illuminate refugees’ everyday lives. The materials also reveal the related, changing contexts of interwar fascination and contact with “the Orient,” global war against fascism, anti-colonial independence movements, and gradual revelations about the destruction of the European world they had escaped.
A reception in the Hall of Witness will follow the program.
Opening remarks
Dr. Elizabeth Anthony, Director, Visiting Scholar Programs, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Speaker
Dr. Atina Grossmann, Ina Levine Invitational Scholar, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Professor of History, The Cooper Union, New York City
Moderator
Dr. Lisa Leff, Director, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies
This program is free and open to the public. Registration is required.
For more information, please contact calendar@ushmm.org.
The Ina Levine Invitational Scholar Award is endowed by the William S. and Ina Levine Foundation of Phoenix, Arizona.
The mission of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center, part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is to ensure the long-term growth and vitality of Holocaust Studies. To do that, it is essential to provide opportunities for new generations of scholars. The vitality and the integrity of Holocaust Studies require openness, independence, and free inquiry, so that new ideas are generated and tested through peer review and public debate. The opinions of scholars expressed before, during, or after their activities with the Mandel Center do not represent and are not endorsed by the Mandel Center or the Museum.