Author to discuss how Germans once conceived idea of world without Jews

On Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938), the Nazis burned the Hebrew Bible everywhere in Germany.

Noted author Alon Confino will explain the horrific reasons why this ominous act took place when he speaks at Fairfield University, on Monday, November 10, 2014 at 7:30 p.m. Free and open to the public, the event will take place in the Dolan School of Business Dining Room. Please call Fairfield University's Carl and Dorothy Bennett Center for Judaic Studies at (203) 254-4000, ext. 2066, to reserve a seat.

In his talk, "A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide," Dr. Confino will elaborate how Germans in the years before World War II came to conceive of the idea of a Germany without Jews, and why this imagined future was crucial to the extermination of Jews that followed. "By burning the Bible, the Nazis actually said, 'We are going to build a new civilization,' " said Dr. Confino, professor in the department of history at the University of Virginia and at Ben Gurion University, Israel.

A leading scholar of German memory and national culture, he is the author of four books. His most recent is also the name of his Fairfield lecture: "A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide" (Yale University Press, 2014). It explores why exactly the Nazis burned the Hebrew Bible everywhere in Germany, a day in which synagogues were burned and lives were lost. Dr. Confino looks into this key event and at the same time examines why the Holocaust occurred. In doing so, he draws on an array of archives across three continents to propose a penetrating new assessment of one of the central moral problems of the twentieth century.

Fairfield University's Judaic Studies Program is the sponsor of this event.

"A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide"
Dr. Alon Confino, professor of history at the University of Virginia and Ben-Gurion University, Israel.
Monday, November 10, 2014 at 7:30 p.m., Dolan School of Business Dining Room. Free. Please call (203) 254-4000, ext. 2066, to reserve a seat as space is limited.

Posted On: 10-28-2014 03:10 PM

Volume: 47 Number: 100