The Never Again Syndrome: Uses and Misuses of Holocaust Memory and the Weaponization of Language

Omer Bartov, Brown University

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Online, Zoom
@ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

This event was presented in collaboration with the Department of History at UW-Madison and World BEYOND War – Madison.

A man looks directly into the camera with a warm smile. His wavy white hair is worn short, as are his mustache and beard. He has dark metallic eyeglasses featuring rectangular lenses. He wears a button-down shirt with a light blue and white pattern beneath a navy blue jacket. Behind him, there is a suggestion of bookshelves.

Omer Bartov is the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. Born in Israel and educated at Tel Aviv University and St. Antony’s College, Oxford, he has written widely on war crimes, interethnic relations, and genocide. Recent books include Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (2018), which won the National Jewish Book Award; Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past (2022), and Genocide, The Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis (2023). His publications have been translated into multiple languages. Bartov’s essays and commentaries have been featured in such national and international newspapers and media outlets as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Guardian, CNN, MSNBC, and the BBC. He is currently writing a book tentatively titled The Broken Promise: A Personal-Political History of Israel and Palestine. His novel, The Butterfly and the Axe, was published this year in the United States and Israel.