Chaire internationale d'Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale 2024-2025 - "Holocaust Bystanders: a History of the Modern State at War" by Raz Segal

Thomas BERNS, Doyen de la Faculté de Philosophie et Sciences sociales,

Marie GORANSSON, vice-Doyenne de la Faculté de Philosophie et Sciences sociales,

Laurent BAVAY, Président du Département d’Histoire, Arts et Archéologie,

Pieter LAGROU, Professeur d’Histoire et responsable académique de la chaire,

Baudouin VELGE, représentant du fonds baron Jean-Charles Velge,
 

ont l'honneur de vous inviter à la leçon inaugurale de la
 

CHAIRE INTERNATIONALE D’HISTOIRE DE LA DEUXIÈME GUERRE MONDIALE

2024-2025

International Chair for the History of the Second World War / Internationale Leerstoel voor de Geschiedenis van de Tweede Wereldoorlog

Holocaust Bystanders:

A History of the Modern State at War

by Raz Segal

Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and

Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University

Monday 9 December 2024 at 6:30PM
Auditorium R42.5.503 (DRION)

The opening lecture will be followed by the Baron VELGE Award, a reception and a photo exhibition in the Coin Culture (Av. Paul Héger, Building U).
 

The International Chair for the History of the second World War organizes annually a series of lectures by a historian who has distinguished her or himself by his or her recent contributions to the field. The Chair has consistently taken pride in honoring scholars who went against the grain with innovative interpretations and endeavored to show that the history of the last global conflict also allows us to understand the contemporary world. The list of laureates of the previous 11 editions highlights this (Timothy Snyder, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Filippo Focardi, Andrii Portnov, Kerstin von Lingen, Pawel Machcewicz, Florent Brayard, Philippe Sands, Giorgos Antoniou, Claire Andrieu, Phillips Payson O’Brien).

For its twelfth edition, The International Chair for the History of the second World War at the Université libre de Bruxelles welcomes Raz Segal in December 2024. Raz Segal teaches Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University, New Jersey. He studied at Tel Aviv University and obtained his PhD at Clark University. His major monograph, Genocide in the Carpathians: War, Social Breakdown, and Mass Violence, 1914-1945 was published by Stanford University Press in 2016 and reissued in a paperback edition in 2020. In this path breaking study, he inserts the fate of the Jewish population of Subcarpatian Rus in the larger context of the policies regarding minorities in the area, from 1914 until 1945, under Habsburg, Czechoslovak and Hungarian rule. The region was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945 and is now part of Ukraine. In his research he endeavors to demonstrate that the genocide of the Jews was part and parcel of a larger European history, thereby shifting interpretative paradigms.

As several laureates of the chair before him, this has also urged him to intervene in the public debate on the israeli invasion of Gaza (see, for instance his recent articles in Time Magazine and Jewish Currents https://time.com/6977457/weaponizing-antisemitism/ and https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide) which, as an israeli historian, came at a great personal and professional cost. Raz Segal is currently working on other regions in southeast Europe, notably western Thrace under Bulgarian rule during World War II. This is part of a book project on the distortion, weaponization, and mobilization of Holocaust history in the reproduction of white supremacy and state violence, including a focus on Israel’s assault on Palestinians from the 1948 Nakba to the current genocidal assault on Gaza.

The twelfth edition will also include a workshop organized on 10 December on “Refugees, Minorities, and the Long Twentieth Century in Thrace”.

An exhibit of photographs by Antonios Pasvantis will be inaugurated in the new cultural space of the university campus, Coin Culture. (https://antoniospasvantis.com/)

Free admission - REGISTRATION REQUESTED : Formulaire en ligne
 

The inaugural lesson will be followed by three other lessons :
 

Tuesday 10 December, 6PM – R42.5.503

Genocide in the Carpathians: Rethinking Holocaust Studies through a Regional History

Wednesday 11 December, 6PM - R42.5.503

Stuck in the Twentieth Century: State Violence in the Era of Global Holocaust Memory

Thursday 12 December, 6PM - R42.5.503

Israel’s Attack on Gaza: The Question of Genocide, and the Future of Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Question

PLAN ULB - ACCÈS : Campus du SOLBOSCH 

INFORMATIONS : phisoc.ulb.be

CONTACT : com.phisoc@ulb.be

Chaire organisée pour la douzième fois par la Faculté de Philosophie et Sciences sociales de l’ULB, grâce à la générosité de feu le Baron Jean-Charles VELGE, décédé le 29 mai 2010, qui tenait à honorer la mémoire de Jean Vanwelkenhuyzen, historien de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale.