Holocaust Scholar to Give Emory Tenenbaum Lecture

Pulitzer Prize winning historian Saul Friedlander will speak on "The Voice of the Witness in the History of the Shoah" as the 2009 Tenenbaum lecturer at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 9 at Emory University's Carlos Museum Reception Hall. Admission is free.

In his talk, Friedlander will explore these often-unheard voices in Holocaust history and offer his insight on how -- in order to try to understand this tragedy -- the perspectives of both the historian and the witness must be woven together.

Contrary to most historical writing on the Holocaust, Friedlander considers the victims' voices as an essential element of the overall interpretation. "These individual voices are the most immediate testimonies about dimensions of ongoing events usually not perceived in other sources," he says. "Like flashes that illuminate parts of a landscape, they confirm intuitions; they warn us against easy generalizations; they tear through the smugness of scholarly detachment."

Born in Prague in 1932, Friedlander survived the war in France hidden in a Catholic seminary. In 1948 he emigrated to Israel. Friedlander currently serves as professor of history at UCLA where he holds the "1939" Club Chair in Holocaust Studies. He received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his most recent book, "Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 2: The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945."

The Tenenbaum Family Lecture Series, sponsored by Emory's Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, celebrates the family of the late Meyer W. Tenenbaum of Savannah, Ga., a 1931 alumnus of Emory College and a 1932 alumnus of Emory Law School. Other Tenenbaum family members who are Emory alumni include: his son, Samuel J. Tenenbaum of Columbia, S.C., Emory College class of 1965; nephew-in-law Ronald Kronowitz of Savannah, Emory Law School class of 1962; and nephew Bert Tenenbaum of Savannah, Emory College class of 1975.