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Over a dozen leading scholars in the field of Holocaust Studies and the Third Reich explored Holocaust historiography and their personal place within the field during a three-day conference hosted by UCT’s Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies & Research, in association with the South African Holocaust & Genocide Foundation.
Under the theme ‘Holocaust Scholarship: Personal Trajectories and Professional Interpretations’, scholars inserted their own biographies into their work in the wake of decades of research and reflection. Among the luminaries was Christopher Browning — renowned for his work on the evolution of the Final Solution as well as the behaviour of ‘ordinary men’ during war; and Sir Richard Evans, the Regius Professor of History at Cambridge. Almost all the participants had been guests of the Kaplan Centre over the past fifteen years, where they taught both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Director of the Centre, Professor Milton Shain, explained that having been exposed over the years to UCT students in Historical Studies, it was time for them to engage with one another on changes and trajectories within the field. The Kaplan Kushlick Foundation ensured the occasion
with a generous grant, notes Shain. In his keynote address, which was also the annual Renee and Ernest Samson lecture sponsored by Ralph and Sue Stern to mark the 13th anniversary of The Cape Town Holocaust Centre, Sir Richard Evans Town Holocaust Centre, Sir Richard Evans reflected on his role as expert witness in the famous David Irving versus Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt trial in London in 2000. Clio* came out with flying colours! As Evans explained in Lying about Hitler, his book about the trial, historical scholarship can ‘reach reasoned conclusions about the Nazi extermination of the Jews on the basis of a careful examination of the written evidence’.
Evans subsequently went on to publish a three volume trilogy on the Third Reich, considered the most comprehensive study of the subject ever undertaken.
* The Muse of History
