News
2023
March 27, 2023, Sommerhauser Symposium on Holocaust Education: “Fascisms: Now and Then,” sponsored by the Harris Center for Judaic Studies, (http://judaic.unl.edu/) in cooperation with the History Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Profs Ari Kohen and Gerald Steinacher are planning to publish the conference papers as volume four in their series “Contemporary Holocaust Studies” (University of Nebraska Press). The series was established in 2019 and focuses on contemporary issues connected to the historical study of the Holocaust, such as antisemitism, racism, political extremism, and ethno-nationalism.
January 5-8, 2023, Conference paper: "Forgive and Forget? The Vatican and the Nuremberg Trials" American Society of Church History (ASCH), Philadelphia.
2022
December 11, 2022, Talk: "The Pope against Nuremberg: Nazi war crime trials, the Vatican, and the question of postwar justice" as part of the Conference: "The Vatican in the face of anti-Jewish persecutions and the Holocaust". Conference Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris.
November 8, Guest lecture: "The Pope against Nuremberg: Nazi war crime trials, the Vatican, and the question of postwar justice", Central European University, Vienna.
October 10, 2022: Talk "Vergeben und Vergessen? Reaktionen der katholischen Kirchenführung zu Nürnberger Prozessen und Entnazifizierung 1945-1955", as part of the workshop: Katholizismus im Umbruch? Michael Kardinal von Faulhaber und die katholische „Ordnung“ in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, Katholische Akademie in Bayern, München. Organizers: IfZG München-Berlin and WWU Münster.
September 29, 2022: Endowed lecture "The Pope against Nuremberg: Nazi war crime trials, the Vatican, and the question of postwar justice" Harvard University, Divinity School. This endowed lecture is particularly meaningful to me, because of the story behind it. The initial endowment has been established at the Harvard Divinity School by the surviving Harvard Refugee Fellows who were awarded University scholarships in 1939-40 as student refugees from Nazi persecution in Central Europe.
2021
September 30 - October 3, 2021: Talk "The Nazi hunter: Simon Wiesenthal and the Täterforschung" German Studies Conference, Indianapolis, IN, "The Role of Austrians in the Origins of Holocaust Studies".
Spring/Summer 2021: I feel very honored to be named the 2021 Senior Fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Research. Simon Wiesenthal was not a historian, but I always considered him the moral conscience of Austria, a lonely voice calling for justice. I will work hard to do him justice when working on my new book about the Vatican and the Nuremberg Trials.
April 26, 2021: Talk "Escaping Nuremberg: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice”, Harvard University Divinity School, Workshop.
April 11, 2021: Talk "Ratlines: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice and the FBI ‘No Safe Haven’ Program
Today", World Without Genocide at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, St. Paul, MN.
January 16, 2021: Talk "The Red Cross and the Escape of Holocaust Perpetrators", conference on the German Red Cross organized by the University of Nuremberg: "Das Deutsche Rote Kreuz im Spannungsfeld zwischen humanitärem Anspruch und historischer Realität 1914 – 1949".