Konrad Kwiet | |
---|---|
Born | 1941 (age 82–83) |
Nationality | German-Australian |
Occupation | history professor |
Known for | historian of the holocaust |
Konrad Kwiet (born 1941) is a historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He is currently Pratt Foundation Professor at the University of Sydney and Resident Historian at the Sydney Jewish Museum. [1] He has worked in universities, museums and research centres around the world, including Heidelberg, Israel, Washington DC, Oxford and Berlin. [2]
Konrad Kwiet was born in Swinemünde in 1941 and educated in Amsterdam and Berlin. He studied history at Technische Universität Berlin, completing his PhD on Nazi policy in the Netherlands. Kwiet emigrated to Australia in 1976 to take up a lecturing position at the University of New South Wales. He retired as Emeritus Professor from Macquarie University in 2000 and is currently Pratt Foundation Professor for Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at the University of Sydney. [2] From 1987 to 1994, he was Chief Historical Consultant to the Special Investigations Unit investigating Nazi war criminals in Australia, set up after research by the journalist Mark Aarons.
Kwiet has appeared regularly in the Australian media to comment on historical debates and events, such as the Daniel Goldhagen debate, the work of Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust, and genocide. [3]
In 2022, Kwiet was put in charge of an investigation into the Nazi connections of Lithuanian-Australian art collector Bob Sredersas. [4]
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is an American author, and former associate professor of government and social studies at Harvard University. Goldhagen reached international attention and broad criticism as the author of two books about the Holocaust: Hitler's Willing Executioners (1996), and A Moral Reckoning (2002). He is also the author of Worse Than War (2009), which examines the phenomenon of genocide, and The Devil That Never Dies (2013), in which he traces a worldwide rise in virulent antisemitism.
The Rosenstrasseprotest is considered to be a significant event in German history as it is the only mass public demonstration by Germans in the Third Reich against the deportation of Jews. The protest on Rosenstraße took place in Berlin during February and March 1943. This demonstration was initiated and sustained by the non-Jewish wives and relatives of Jewish men and Mischlinge,. Their husbands had been targeted for deportation, based on the racial policy of Nazi Germany, and detained in the Jewish community house on Rosenstrasse. The protests, which occurred over the course of seven days, continued until the men being held were released by the Gestapo. The protest by the women of the Rosenstrasse led to the release of approximately 1,800 Berlin Jews.
Samuel Mitja Rapoport was a Russian Empire-born German university professor of biochemistry in East Germany. Of Jewish descent and a committed communist, he fled Austria after its annexation by Nazi Germany, and moved to the United States. In 1950, as a result of an investigation of un-American activities, he was offered a professorship in East Berlin. He was married to pediatrician Ingeborg Rapoport.
The history of Jews in Australia traces the history of Australian Jews from the British settlement of Australia commencing in 1788. Though Europeans had visited Australia before 1788, there is no evidence of any Jewish sailors among the crew. The first Jews known to have come to Australia came as convicts transported to Botany Bay in 1788 aboard the First Fleet that established the first European settlement on the continent, on the site of present-day Sydney.
The International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust was a two-day conference in Tehran, Iran that opened on 11 December 2006. Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the conference sought "neither to deny nor prove the Holocaust... [but] to provide an appropriate scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom about a historical issue". Participants included David Duke, Moshe Aryeh Friedman, Robert Faurisson, Fredrick Töben, Michèle Renouf, Ahmed Rami and Yisroel Dovid Weiss of Neturei Karta.
Alex (Uldis) Kurzem was an Australian pensioner originally from the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, and a centre-point of a long-standing controversy regarding his Holocaust memoir which has led to a financial windfall in the early 21st century. He was the subject of a television documentary and a best-selling book by his son, translated into 13 languages; both entitled The Mascot.
The Holocaust in Lithuania resulted in the near total eradication of Lithuanian (Litvaks) and Polish Jews[a] in Generalbezirk Litauen of the Reichskommissariat Ostland in the Nazi-controlled Lithuania. Of approximately 208,000–210,000 Jews at the time of the Nazi invasion, an estimated 190,000 to 195,000 were killed before the end of World War II, most of them between June and December 1941. More than 95% of Lithuania's Jewish population was murdered over the three-year German occupation, a more complete destruction than befell any other country in the Holocaust. Historians attribute this to the massive collaboration in the genocide by the non-Jewish local paramilitaries, though the reasons for this collaboration are still debated. The Holocaust resulted in the largest loss of life in so short a period of time in the history of Lithuania.
Australian Jews, or Jewish Australians, are Jews who are Australian citizens or permanent residents of Australia. In the 2021 census there were 99,956 people who identified Judaism as their religious affiliation and 29,113 Australians who identified as Jewish by ancestry, an increase from 97,355 and 25,716, respectively, from the 2016 census. The actual number is almost certainly higher, because being a Jew is not just about being religious, but the census data is based on religious affiliation, so secular Jews often feel it would be inaccurate to answer with "Judaism". Also, since the question is optional, many practising Holocaust survivors and Haredi Jews are believed to prefer not to disclose their religion in the census. By comparison, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz estimated a Jewish-Australian population of 120,000–150,000, while other estimates based on the death rate in the community estimate the size of the community as 250,000, which would make them 1% of the population. Based on the census data, Jewish citizens make up about 0.4% of the Australian population. The Jewish community of Australia is composed mostly of Ashkenazi Jews, though there are Jews in Australia from many other traditions and levels of religious observance and participation in the Jewish community.
The Pawsey Medal is awarded annually by the Australian Academy of Science to recognize outstanding research in the physics by an Australian scientist early in their career.
Dovid Katz is an American-born Vilnius-based scholar, author, and educator specializing in Yiddish language and literature, Lithuanian-Jewish culture, and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. In recent years, he has been known for combating the so-called "Double Genocide" revision of Holocaust history which asserts a moral equivalence between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He is editor of the web journal Defending History which he founded in 2009. He is known to spend part of each year at his home in North Wales. His website includes a list of his books, of some articles by topic, a record of recent work, and a more comprehensive bibliography.
Holocaust studies, or sometimes Holocaust research, is a scholarly discipline that encompasses the historical research and study of the Holocaust. Institutions dedicated to Holocaust research investigate the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary aspects of Holocaust methodology, demography, sociology, and psychology. It also covers the study of Nazi Germany, World War II, Jewish history, antisemitism, religion, Christian-Jewish relations, Holocaust theology, ethics, social responsibility, and genocide on a global scale. Exploring trauma, memories, and testimonies of the experiences of Holocaust survivors, human rights, international relations, Jewish life, Judaism, and Jewish identity in the post-Holocaust world are also covered in this type of research.
The Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre began as Africa's first Holocaust centre founded in 1999. It has sister Centres in Johannesburg and Durban, and together they form part of the association, the South African Holocaust & Genocide Foundation (SAHGF). The SAHGF determines the educational and philosophical direction of the centre. It also conducts teacher training and is the only accredited service-provider for in-service training in Holocaust education in the country. It has trained over 5,000 teachers.
Richard David Breitman, is an American historian best known for his study of the Holocaust.
Donald Joseph Watt was an Australian Army soldier and the author of a literary hoax, a fictitious Holocaust memoir entitled Stoker: The Story of an Australian Soldier who Survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, published in 1995 by Simon & Schuster. Only the disclosure of Watt's fabrications altered the status of the book which was initially praised by various Jewish organizations as the most important work written in Australia.
Johannes Tuchel is a German political scientist. He is currently head of the German Resistance Memorial Centre museum and chief executive of the foundation responsible for it.
Jürgen Förster is a German historian who specialises in the history of Nazi Germany and World War II. He is a professor of history at the University of Freiburg, the position he has held since 2005. Förster is a contributor to the seminal work Germany and the Second World War from the Military History Research Office (MGFA).
Jürgen Matthäus is a German historian and head of the research department of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is an author and editor of multiple works on the history of World War II and the Holocaust. Matthäus was a contributor to Christopher Browning's 2004 work The Origins of the Final Solution.
John Milfull was an Australian academic, educator and professor. In 1971 he was appointed as Professor of German and Head of the School of German at the University of New South Wales.
Helen Tichauer was an American graphics designer, Holocaust survivor and human rights worker. Tichauer was born in Pozsony, Austro-Hungarian Kingdom, as Helen Spitzer, was kidnapped by the SS, and held in death camps, in Poland, lived in displaced persons camps in Germany, after the war. It was there that she married Erwin Tichauer, then the chief of security of her camp. The Tichauer were called upon by the United Nations on multiple humanitarian projects. Erwin Tichauer also served as a professor of bio-engineering, at University of New South Wales and New York University.
Bob Sredersas was a Lithuanian-Australian art collector. Sredersas came to prominence after donating his private art collection of over 100 works to the City of Wollongong. The collection, which included pieces by artists such as Arthur Streeton, Grace Cossington Smith, Margaret Preston and Norman Lindsay, assisted in establishing the Wollongong Art Gallery.
Launching of her book: Egyptian-Jewish Emigrés in Australia – with introductions by: Prof Konrad Kwiet & Prof Suzanne Rutland OAM.