Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany

The event is organized by the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center. The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at SSU is a co-sponsor.

Between 1933 and 1945, hundreds of Jews resisted persecution in Nazi Germany and annexed Austria, including public protest and taking pictures to document persecution, despite being often heavily punished by the regime. The fact that so many German Jewish women and men of all ages, educations, and professions resisted obliterates the common view of Jewish passivity under Nazi persecution.
In commemoration of the 81st anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, Dr. Wolf Gruner presents a new and broader definition of resistance including five different kinds of individual acts, and a large set of new sources, ranging from police and court records to survivor testimonies and photographs. Dr. Gruner holds the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and is Professor of History at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles since 2008. He is the Founding Director of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research since 2014.