May 16, 5 PM: Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany, w/ Professor Wolf Gruner

The UC Davis Jewish Studies Program, the Department of History, and the Department of German & Russian are pleased to present a talk by Professor Wolf Gruner (USC) based on his book Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler’s Germany. This event will be held May 16 at 5pm in Sproul 912. Snacks and refreshments will be provided. Please see the flyer and more information below.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany (Yale University Press 2023)

Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, Holocaust category

A highly original and compelling account of individual Jews who resisted Nazi persecution, challenging the traditional portrayal of Jewish passivity during the Holocaust.

Drawing on twelve years of research in dozens of archives in Austria, Germany, Israel, and the United States, this book tells the story of five Jewish people—a merchant, a homemaker, a real estate broker, and two teenagers—who bravely resisted persecution and defended themselves in Nazi Germany. These stories have not been told until now, and each case is one of many, as Gruner shows by resurfacing dozens of similar accounts of Jewish refusal to accept persecution and violence in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1943, upending the notion of passive Jews and expanding the concept of resistance.

Each individual described here represents a category of resistance defined by the author: written opposition, oral protest, contesting Nazi propaganda, defiance of anti-Jewish laws and measures, and self-defense against physical attacks. Many of these courageous acts resulted in the Jewish resisters, men and women, young and old, being prosecuted and put on trial, and often receiving harsh punishments, while some led to acquittal by courts and others to changes in Nazi policies. Taken together, these accounts reframe our understanding of German Jewish agency during the Holocaust, while also providing an astonishing examination of the complex Nazi reactions to the many individual acts of Jewish resistance. 

Wolf Gruner holds the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies, is Professor of History at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles since 2008 and the Founding Director of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research (previously USC Dornsife Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research) since 2014. 

He is a specialist in the history of the Holocaust and in comparative genocide studies. He received his PhD in History from the Technical University Berlin in 1994 as well as his Habilitation in 2006. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, Yad Vashem Jerusalem, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Women’s Christian University Tokyo, and the Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg, as well as the Desmond E. Lee Visiting Professor for Global Awareness at Webster University in St. Louis. 

He is an appointed member of the Academic Committee of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (since 2017), the executive committee of the Consortium of Higher Education Centers of Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies (since 2018), the International Academic Advisory board of the Center for the Research on the Holocaust in Germany at Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research, Jerusalem (since 2012), and the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Genocide Research (since 2010).

He is the author of ten books on the Holocaust, among them Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis. Economic Needs and Nazi Racial Aims with Cambridge University Press (2006). His 2016 prizewinning German book was published in 2019 as The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia. Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses with Berghahn in English, as well as in Czech, and is forthcoming in Hebrew. In addition, he published Parias de la Patria“. El mito de la liberación de los indígenas en la República de Bolivia 1825-1890in Spanish with Plural Editores 2015.

He coedited four books, including Resisting Persecution. Jews and Their Petitions during the Holocaust (Berghahn 2020), New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison(Purdue UP 2019), and The Greater German Reich and the Jews. Nazi Persecution Policies in the Annexed Territories 1935-1945 (Berghahn 2015).

His book Resisters. How Ordinary Jews fought Persecution in Hitler’s Germany (Yale University Press 2023), selected as a finalist for the National Jewish book award, is written for a wider audience and features the life stories of five Jewish men and women who resisted in different ways against persecution in Nazi Germany. By discussing many additional courageous acts, the book demonstrates the wide range of Jewish resistance in Nazi Germany, challenges the myth of Jewish passivity and illuminates individual Jewish agency during the Holocaust.