Celebrating Guy Stern's Memory: 

Remembering, Forgetting, and Sharing

 

Thursday October 24th and Friday October 25th

 

Keynote speaker

Omer Bartov, Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University and author of numerous books, including Germany’s War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories (2003), The “Jew” in Cinema: From The Golem to Don’t Touch My Holocaust (2005), Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz(2018), and most recently Tales fron the Borderlands : Making and Unmaking the Galician Past (2022).

 

Showing of The Ritchie Boys (documentary, 2004)

Thursday October 24th, 5:30-7pm Bernath Auditorium, Undergraduate Library

Introduction to film: Professor Barrett Watten (English/Academy of Scholars) 

During WWII, the U.S. formed an elite intelligence unit -- mostly German Jewish academics -- at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. Tasked with devising ways to break the morale of the SS, these men are often credited with bringing an early end to the war. Some of these heroes, who are now in the eighties, are reunited in this documentary. Professor Guy Stern (1922-2023) was a member of the Ritchie boys and is featured in the film. He was very proud of his work in this unit, and the showing of the documentary honors his memory.

 

Friday October 25th Symposium at Student Center (Hilberry AB)

 

Opening remarks (10:30-11:00)

Associate Dean of CLAS and Distinguished Service Professor, Ed Cackett (Physics and Astronomy)

Donald Haase: Remembering Guy

Stephanie Williams, Director, Wayne State University Press

Coffee break (11:00-11:15)

11:15-12:45: Roundtable on Exile Studies

Drawing from Professor Stern’s scholarship on exile and diaspora studies, speakers will consider the question of who is an exile, what constitutes exile, and how exile affects people differently based on intersectional factors and/or how exiles and members of a diaspora negotiate their identities, languages, and cultures, with those who remained in the homeland and the younger generation who has made the host country their new home. 

Moderator: Anne Duggan (CMLLC/Academy of Scholars)

Participants: Professors Akrish Adhikari (French and Francophone Studies), Lance Gable (Law), Theago Krause (African American Studies/History), and Andrew Newman (Anthropology) 

Respondent: Professor Omer Bartov (History, Brown University)

Lunch for those who confirmed attendance

2:15-3:45: Keynote talk: Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies Omer Bartov

“Genocide from Below: Rewriting the Holocaust as First-Person Local History”

Introduction and moderator: Distinguished Emeritus Professor Ronald Aronson

Genocide from Below: Rewriting the Holocaust as First-Person Local History

 

For more than four hundred years, the Eastern European border town of Buczacz – today part of Ukraine – was home to a highly diverse citizenry. It was here that Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews all lived side by side in relative harmony. Then came World War II, and three years later the entire Jewish population had been murdered by German and Ukrainian police, while Ukrainian nationalists eradicated Polish residents. In this lecture, Omer Bartov (Brown University) will discuss the significance of individual witnesses from one locality to the writing of history, particularly that of conflict and war. Genocide, he explains, doesn’t occur as is often portrayed in popular history, with the quick ascent of a vitriolic political leader and the unleashing of military might. It begins in seeming peace, slowly and often unnoticed, as the culmination of pent-up slights and grudges and indignities. The perpetrators aren’t only sociopathic soldiers. They are neighbours and friends and family. They are also middle-aged men who come from elsewhere, often with their wives and children and parents, and settle into a life of bourgeois comfort peppered with bouts of mass murder.

 

4:00 Final Words from Guy

Distinguished Professor Melba Boyd (African American Studies/Academy of Scholars): Readings from Professor Stern’s memoir, Invisible Ink

 

Reception