Programm

12 April 2018    Venue: Centre Marc Bloch Friedrichstraße 191, 10117 Berlin, Conference Room Germaine Tillion   9:00     Markus Messling (Vice-director of the CMB) Welcoming words    9:10-9:30                   Aurélia Kalisky (CMB/ZfL) and Dominic Williams (University of Leeds): Introduction    9:30-10:30                  Panel 1: Juridical Testimony from the Sonderkommando: Morality, History, Agency.          Chair: Guillaume Mouralis (CMB/CNRS)   Andrea Rudorff (Edition Judenverfolgung des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin): Early Testimony from Feinsilber, Dragon and Tauber. Moral Dimensions Peter Davies (University of Edinburgh): What Can We Learn from Trial Testimony? Filip Müller’s Sonderkommando Testimony to the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial   10:30-11:00    Break   11:00-12:30                Panel 2: Questioning Paradigms                                     Chair: Sonja Knopp (FU Berlin/Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut)    Michal Aharony (Ben Gurion University of the Negev): Resisting Dehumanization in Auschwitz – the Case of the Sonderkommando Dawn Skorczewski (Brandeis University): Sonderkommando Testimonies in the Intersubjective Field  Florine Marmigère (Université de Strasbourg): From a Post-war Memorialization to a Later Memorability: the Rehabilitative Turning Point of the 1990s     12:30-13:30    Buffet Lunch    13:30-15:00                Panel 3: The Histories of the Sonderkommando: New Approaches. Chair: Katrin Stoll (DHI Warsaw)    Gideon Greif (Shem Olam Institute for the Research, Documentation and Teaching the Holocaust/ Foundation for Holocaust Educational Projects): Cases of Solidarity and Noble Deeds Within the Sonderkommando Inner Life Igor Bartosik (Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum): New Perspectives from SS Documents Tom Lawson (Northumbria University at Newcastle): The Sonderkommando and Cultural History   15:00-15:15    Break   15:15-16:45                Panel 4: Responding to the Sonderkommando’s Writings Chair: Christin Zühlke (TU Berlin, Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung)    Orietta Ombrosi (Sapienza University of Rome): Silence of the witnesses. For a Philosophy of Testimony Avichai Zur (Jerusalem University/Potsdam University): Zalmen Gradowzki’s Diary: A Literary-Theological Analysis Philippe Mesnard (Blaise-Pascal University, Clermont-Ferrand 2): Reading the Sonderkommando: Writing beyond Oneself     16:45-17:15    Break     17:15-18:15                Panel 5: Microhistories of the Sonderkommando. Chair: Dagi Knellessen (Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow)   Bart Nauta (NIOD Amsterdam): A Microhistory of Dutch Men in the Sonderkommando and the Waffen-SS at the Crematoria of Auschwitz  Andreas Kilian (Independent Scholar): Individual and Member of the Resistance in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando: Marcel Nadjary in the Testimony of his Contemporaries     18:15-18:30    Break     18:30-19:45                Roundtable 1: Editing the Sonderkommando   Chair: Dominic Williams with participants to include Pavel Polian, Zsombor Hunyadi (University of Jerusalem), Avichai Zur (Potsdam/University of Jerusalem)       19:45               Conference Dinner           13. April 2018   Venue: Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Schützenstr. 18, 10117 Berlin, „Trajekte“ Conference Room     9:00-10:30                  Panel 6: Reading Traces. Materialities of Things Past                                       Chair: Katrin Stoll (DHI Warsaw)   Noah Benninga (University of Jerusalem): The Materiality of Writing in Auschwitz: the Sonderkommando Scrolls as Inscriptions of Life and Death Marta Zawodna-Stephan (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań): Scrolls hidden under the ashes. Thoughts about the relationship between material witnesses            Pavel Polian (Russian Academy of Sciences/Freiburg University) and Alexander Nikityaev: To Read the Unreadable: Techniques of Multi-Spectral Imaging and the Manuscripts of the Sonderkommando   10:30-10:45    Break   10:45-12:45                Roundtable 2: Translating Zalmen Gradowski.   Chair: Janina Wurbs (Bern University) with Aleksandra Polian (translator for the Russian edition), Almut Seiffert (German), Miriam Trinh (German), Zsombor Hunyadi (Hungarian). Some remarks of Batia Baum (French), Magdalena Ruta (Polish) and Avichai Zur (Hebrew) will be read.   12:45-14:30    Lunch    14:30-15:30                Panel 7: Representing Extermination                                     Chair: Dominic Williams (Leeds University)    David Dickson (University of Portsmouth): The Fictional Representation of the Sonderkommando Beyond the Third Wave of Holocaust Commemoration Samantha Mitschke (Independent Scholar): Do we weep with them? Empathy and the Sonderkommando onstage   15:30-15:45    Break   15:45-17:15                Panel 8: Son of Saul                                     Chair: Aurelia Kalisky (ZfL)    Catalina Botez (University of Konstanz) Collateral Perpetration, Agency, and Suspended Ethics in Son of Saul (2015) and Jud Süss. Film ohne Gewissen (2010) Isabel Wollaston (University of Birmingham): ‘Half-victim, half-hangman’? Representing the Auschwitz Sonderkommando in The Grey Zone (Tim Blake Nelson, 2001) and Son of Saul (László Nemes, 2015) Jeff Wallen (Hampshire College): Facing the Sonderkommando: Son of Saul and the Dynamics of Witnessing   17:15-18:15    Break with a snack     18:15-21:30    Screening of Son of Saul of Laszlo Nemes (2016) followed by its discussion with Ludger Schwarte (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf) and Clara Royer (CEFRES, Prag/co-scriptwriter of Son of Saul)