Autumn Semester 2023
The last survivors of the Shoah
The Gamaraal Foundation, together with the Sigi Feigel Visiting Professorship for Jewish Studies at the Faculty of Theology and the Visiting Professorship for Science and Judaism at ETH Zurich, is organising a lecture series in the autumn semester of 2023 that will not be able to take place in this form in a few years' time: The focus will be on the eyewitness accounts of survivors of the Shoah who experienced it as children or young people. With Ivan Lefkovits (Shoah survivor, emeritus professor, formerly of the Basel Institute of Immunology), Charlotte Knobloch (Holocaust survivor, President of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria) and Agnes Hirschi (Holocaust survivor, journalist and author), three personalities will describe their experiences, adventures and influences first-hand. There will be ample opportunity to engage in conversation with them. These three eyewitness accounts will be introduced by a lecture by Nicolas Berg, who will speak about the form and function of survivor testimony and its significance for academic historiography and public remembrance culture. The event will conclude with a lecture by Simon Geissbühler, who is responsible on behalf of the Swiss Confederation for the creation of a Swiss memorial site for the victims of National Socialism and will address current issues surrounding the remembrance of the Shoah in Switzerland.