NYU’s School of Law will host Nazi hunter and author Serge Klarsfeld for “Militant of Memory,” a discussion with journalist Peter Hellman, on Monday, November 26, 7:30 p.m.
New York University’s School of Law will host Nazi hunter and author Serge Klarsfeld for “Militant of Memory,” a discussion with journalist Peter Hellman, on Monday, November 26, 7:30 p.m. at Vanderbilt Hall, Greenberg Lounge, 40 Washington Square South (between MacDougal and Sullivan Streets).
The event, co-sponsored by NYU’s Center for French Civilization and Culture and the NYU School of Law, is free and open to the public. Admission is on a first-come, first-served basis. Space is limited. For more information, call 212.998.8750 or email maison.francaise@nyu.edu. Subways: A, B, C, D, E, F, M (W. 4th Street). Reporters interested in attending the event must RSVP to Michelle Tsai, NYU’s Office of Public Affairs, at 212.998.6849 or michelle.tsai@nyu.edu.
Klarsfeld is the leading historian of the Shoah as it occurred in France. His pioneering work, “Memorial to the Jews Deported from France 1942-44” (1979), revealed the names of the 76,000 deportees and brought to light German telexes and other documents related to the deportation machinery. These documents served as key evidence in the 1979 trial in Cologne of three Nazi deportation operatives, who were all convicted. Among Klarsfeld’s more than two dozen other major works is “French Children of the Shoah” (1996, NYU Press), named one of the 10 most important books of the year by the Los Angeles Times, and the newly published “Memorial de la Deportation des Juifs de France," a massive updating and amplification of the original “Memorial”.
A historian and a lawyer, Klarsfeld is also a self-described “militant de memoire,” a calling that he has shared for almost 50 years with his wife, Beate. He has acted on behalf of the victims and against the perpetrators as a French Jew whose father was killed at Auschwitz, she as a German Lutheran whose father was a Wehrmacht soldier. The couple has been the driving force in bringing to justice such Nazi criminals as Kurt Lischka, chief of the Gestapo in Paris, Klaus Barbie, so-called Butcher of Lyon, and Maurice Papon, a high Vichy official. In 1979, Klarsfeld organized the Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France, an organization that gave a voice to victims of the Shoah.
Hellman, who has written for New York Magazine, the New York Sun, the Forward, and other publications, is the author of When Courage was Stronger than Fear, which chronicles the efforts of non-Jews to save Jews during the Holocaust.
Klarsfeld will be introduced by Burt Neuborne, Inez Milholland Professor of Civil Liberties at the NYU School of Law. The discussion will be in English.