A monthly audio series and podcast service, hosted by Committee on Conscience Project Director Bridget Conley-Zilkic, that brings you the voices of human rights defenders, experts, advocates, and government officials. Vital voices addressing one of humanity's most vital issues. The opinions expressed in these interviews do not necessarily represent those of the Museum.
Michael Ignatieff on Raphael Lemkin and the word "genocide."
Having spent the majority of his career teaching about the Holocaust and genocide, Claremont McKenna College Professor of Philosophy, John Roth, shares his thoughts on the ethical responsibility that memory imposes upon human beings. As discussed in "The Holocaust and the Common Good," an essay in his book, "Ethics During and After the Holocaust: In the Shadow of Birkenau," John discusses how memory shapes our values and our choices.
Do war crimes trials help create a shared historical understanding? Historian Donald Bloxham, this year’s J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, speaks with Jerry Fowler about the effect of the Nuremberg trials of top Nazis on attitudes of the German public and of post-World War I trials of top Ottoman officials on attitudes of the Turkish public.
Legal scholar William Schabas, director of the Irish Human Rights Centre and author of Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes, discusses the history of genocide in international law and its relationship to the overlapping concept of crime against humanity.
Archivist Becky Erbelding speaks with Jerry Fowler about an important addition to the Holocaust Museum's collection—a personal photo album with pictures chronicling the lives of SS officers and other Nazis at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The rare images capture Nazi officials relaxing and enjoying time off while Jews were being murdered at rates as fast as anytime during the Holocaust.
Jane Wells, discusses her experience as a producer of the film, The Devil Came on Horseback, and that of her father, Sidney Bernstein, who documented the liberation of the concentration camps at the end of WWII.
Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel discusses the importance of remembering and bearing witness.
Omer Bartov, John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at Brown University, details the legacy of Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish lawyer from Poland who coined the term genocide. He also discusses whether mass violence is different today than earlier in human existence as well as the significance of the codification since the Holocaust of international prohibitions against genocide.
This interview is the first of three that Voices on Genocide Prevention is producing in conjunction with Facing History and Ourselves. Professor Bartov will participate in an online discussion on March 12th and 13th which you can join by registering here.
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum historian Susan Bachrach discusses the boycott debate that took place when Nazi Germany was slated to host the Olympic Games in 1936. Amid protests by athletes and others, Germany convinced the world that it was fit to hold the Olympics, and as Susan explains, used the Games to boost its image in the international community.
Having spent the majority of his career teaching about the Holocaust and genocide, Claremont McKenna College Professor of Philosophy, John Roth, shares his thoughts on the ethical responsibility that memory imposes upon human beings. As discussed in "The Holocaust and the Common Good," an essay in his new book, "Ethics During and After the Holocaust: In the Shadow of Birkenau," John discusses how memory shapes our values and our choices.
Museum