The Program in Jewish Studies, the William A. Wise Law Library at the University of Colorado Law School, and cosponsors at the University of Colorado Boulder will honor International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a public lecture by visiting scholar Professor Nils Roemer and the highly acclaimed international exhibit听Lawyers Without Rights: Jewish Lawyers in Germany Under the Third Reich. Both are free and open to the public.
Professor Roemer鈥檚 public lecture, 鈥淭he Holocaust: Then and Now, Spanning the Void,鈥� will take place听Thursday,听January 26, 7:00-8:30 p.m.,听in Wittemyer Courtroom (Room 101) in the Wolf Law Building on the CU Boulder campus, one day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27). RSVPs are appreciated as space is limited. Please email听CUJewishStudies@colorado.edu听or call 303-492-7143.
The听Lawyers Without Rights听exhibit will be on display听January 5 through January 30, 2017听in the William A. Wise Law Library in the Wolf Law Building on the CU Boulder campus. The exhibit is sponsored by the William A. Wise Library at the University of Colorado Law School and the CU Program in Jewish Studies, in conjunction with the American Bar Association and the German Federal Bar.
The Lecture
Professor Roemer鈥檚 lecture is the fifth annual event hosted by CU Boulder鈥檚 Program in Jewish Studies in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The voids and empty spaces in the听Jewish Museum in Berlin evoke destruction and absence. The听"Memory Void," one of the symbolic spaces on the grounds of the museum, which was designed by Daniel Libeskind, recalls the Holocaust as well as the听many lives that might have been had the millions of people who died in the Holocaust lived to see another day. In his lecture, Professor Roemer will explore absences and听voids听as important aspects of听remembrance. An听awareness is听apparent in听communal and family remembrances but often obscured in public commemorations in museums and on听Holocaust remembrance days. Professor Roemer will听develop the听theme of听absence听and advance models of remembrance that view听the Holocaust as a past event within the context of an annihilated future.
Nils Roemer is the Stan and Barbara Rabin Professor in Holocaust Studies and the Director of the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. He received his PhD in History from Columbia University in 2000.
In addition to his numerous published articles, Professor Roemer is the author of听Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Between History and Faith听(2005) and听The Story of Worms: German Cities 鈥� Jewish Memories听(2010). He is currently finishing a book-length study on Central European Jewish travel writing in the 20th听century.
Professor Roemer serves as a board member for the Leo Baeck Institute in London and is an external reviewer for multiple scholarly journals. He has received numerous fellowships, including from the Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Exhibit
The听Lawyers Without Rights听exhibit has been shown in nearly 100 cities across Germany, the United States, and other parts of the world. The idea for the exhibit was conceived in 1998 when an Israeli lawyer asked the regional bar of Berlin for a list of Jewish lawyers whose licenses had been revoked by the Nazi regime.
鈥淭he regional bar decided not only to research a list of names, but also to try to find out more about the fates behind all those names,鈥� said Axel Filges, past president of the German Federal Bar. 鈥淪ome were able to leave the country after the Nazis came into power, but very many of them were incarcerated or murdered. The non-Jewish German lawyers of those days remained silent. They failed miserably, and so did the lawyers鈥� organizations. We do not know why.鈥�
After the Berlin bar transformed its research into an exhibit, other regional bars began asking whether they could show it and add their own research.
鈥淪o, like a puzzle, a portrait of the fate of Jewish lawyers in Germany has emerged step by step,鈥� Filges said.
For more information about the lecture or exhibit, please visit听, or call 303-492-7143.