Crisis, War, and the Holocaust in Lithuania
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Book Talk
Admission: Free Registration is required. |
Crisis, War, and the Holocaust in Lithuania is the first scholarly English-language study of Lithuania during World War II. The book utilizes previously inaccessible archives as well as academic works published in that country in the post-Soviet era. In the first chapters, the book examines the multifaceted relations of Lithuania’s national communities before World War II and the international and domestic crises which led to the destruction of the Lithuanian state in 1940. Author Saulius Sužiedėlis describes the process of the mass persecution and murder of the country’s Jews during the Holocaust, the role of Nazi and collaborationist forces, and acts of resistance, as well as the society’s responses. The book concludes with an examination of the postwar struggle within Lithuania to confront this legacy of unprecedented violence.
Join YIVO for a discussion with Sužiedėlis about this new book, led by Jonathan Brent.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
About the Speakers
Saulius Sužiedėlis is Professor Emeritus at Millersville University of Pennsylvania specializing in the history of Russia and East Central Europe. The author is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas for contributions to historical research on the Holocaust and public awareness of the Shoah in Lithuania.
Jonathan Brent is the Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City. From 1991 to 2009 he was Editorial Director and Associate Director of Yale Press. He is the founder of the world acclaimed Annals of Communism series, which he established at Yale Press in 1991. Brent is the co-author of Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953 (Harper-Collins, 2003) and Inside the Stalin Archives (Atlas Books, 2008). He is now working on a biography of the Soviet-Jewish writer Isaac Babel. Brent teaches history and literature at Bard College.