Cornell symposium to focus on how to teach the Holocaust to future generations, Dec. 1

An interdisciplinary symposium, "Representing the Holocaust," will be held at the A.D. White House at Cornell Monday, Dec. 1, beginning at 4:30 p.m.

The symposium is co-sponsored by Cornell's Department of German Studies, Society for the Humanities and Program in Jewish Studies.

"The symposium will explore the question of how to teach coming generations about the Holocaust," said symposium organizer David Brenner, a Mellon post-doctoral fellow in German-Jewish studies. "As the 20th century comes to an end, so too does the last generation of survivors and eyewitnesses of that genocide. This question is rendered all the more urgent by the virtual explosion in memorials and other 'sites of memory,' ranging from local museums and video testimony projects to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation."

The papers to be discussed at the symposium include, "Holocaust Tourism: The March of the Living and Other Youth Group Encounters with Auschwitz"; "Mandated or Free Speech: The Legal Restrictions on Hate Speech in International Comparison"; "The Web of Hate: Revisionism on the Internet"; "Hollywood and the Holocaust: Mass Culture as Educator"; "It Depends on the Audience: Teaching the Controversies in the Post-Goldhagen Era"; "Obedience to Authority and Other Conformisms: The Contribution of Psychology to Holocaust Education"; "The Abandonment of the Jews as a 'Lesson' in American History"; and "The Reception of Schindler's List in Germany, Israel and the United States."

Participants include Cornell undergraduates Michael Levy, Ethan Linden, Jenn Sandler, Jonathan Seiden and Vera Varshavsky.

Closing remarks will be made by Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann, the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters at Cornell.

For further information on the symposium, contact David Brenner, at 183 Goldwin Smith Hall, 255-8355, db61@cornell.edu.

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