JDC Archives Virtual Programs: Winter 2023-2024
Please join us at our upcoming virtual programs!
The JDC Archives is offering an array of online public programs in the coming months. These events are listed below; please register for each one individually by clicking on its RSVP link. Recordings of past programs are available via our Public Programs Recordings page.
VIRTUAL BOOK TALK:
Escape to the Andes: The Story of Mauricio Hochschild, the “Schindler of Bolivia”
Monday, December 11, 2023
12:00pm–1:15pm (Eastern)
In this talk, authors Raúl Peñaranda and Robert Brockmann will introduce their recently published book, Escape to the Andes: The Story of Mauricio Hochschild, the “Schindler of Bolivia.” This compelling work, written in Spanish, delves into a lesser-known chapter of history, revealing how Bolivia became a refuge for approximately 12,000 European Jews escaping the horrors of the Holocaust. Drawing upon a rich array of archival sources, including materials from the JDC Archives, the book uncovers the remarkable role played by Mauricio Hochschild, a prosperous German Jewish mine owner in Bolivia, in saving these refugees. His efforts to provide sanctuary to those fleeing persecution in Europe shed light on an overlooked facet of World War II history. This presentation promises to offer valuable insights into the actions of individuals like Mauricio Hochschild.
This program is part of the new webinar series The Latin American and Caribbean Jewish Experience in the Twentieth Century
Robert Brockmann is currently a university professor, journalist, writer, and strategic communications consultant. He studied Communication Sciences at the Universidad Católica San Pablo in La Paz, Bolivia and Journalism and Photography at Arizona State University. He specialized in international journalism at the Akademie für Pubizistik and the Deutsche Presse-Agentur in Hamburg. He was an international correspondent and associate editor of La Razón newspaper in La Paz. He is a fellow of the Hemispheric Center for Defense Studies in Washington. He has written, edited, and translated several books and anthologies.
Raúl Peñaranda is a Bolivian journalist and writer. He is currently the editor of the news portal Brújula Digital (Digital Compass), that he founded in 2018. Peñaranda has been the editor and founder of three outlets in Bolivia: the weeklies La Época and Nueva Economía and the daily Pagina Siete. Peñaranda is the author or co-author of 12 books on journalism and politics. He has won numerous awards, including the Maria Moors Cabot Prize conferred by Columbia University, the Nieman fellowship at Harvard University (2008), the Reagan-Fascel fellowship at NED (2017), and the gold medal given by the UN Correspondents Association.
RSVPWEBINAR:
Healing Objects: The Joint’s involvement in Jewish cultural reconstruction in the aftermath of the Holocaust
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
12:00pm-1:15pm (Eastern)
After the Holocaust, Jewish material culture was largely destroyed along with European Jewry itself. Only some scattered material remnants survived. The process of searching for, reclaiming, and finding new homes for these remnants was highly emotional, symbolic, and contested. The undertaking symbolized different ideas about Jewish survival and reconstruction, and hence about the postwar future of Europe’s Jews. This was especially true of Jewish ritual objects. Some of these were regarded as sacred and had relevance not only for religious practice but also as cultural carriers of memory. On multiple levels, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, also known as JDC or the “Joint,” supported Jewish ritual and cultural reconstruction in the postwar era. This lecture takes a closer look at this lesser-known facet of the Joint’s postwar activities by using archival materials and artifacts from the JDC archives.
Dr. Anna-Carolin Augustin is a post-doctoral researcher in history working as a research fellow at the German Historical Institute, Washington DC. Her main field of research is modern German-Jewish History and Culture with an emphasis on Jewish material culture. Her first monograph, Berliner Kunstmatronage. Sammlerinnen und Förderinnen bildender Kunst um 1900, was published in 2018 (Wallstein Publishing House). As a trained museum professional, she has also paid special attention to provenance research in the field of Judaica. In her current post-doc research project, she is examining several intertwined subjects—the biographies and migration paths of Jewish ritual objects, their changing attributions, meanings, and functions after 1945—for a study in cultural history taking a transnational approach. Dr. Augustin is the recipient of the 2023 Ruth and David Musher/JDC Archives Fellowship.
RSVPWEBINAR:
Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora
Wednesday, February 21, 2024
12:00pm-1:15pm (Eastern)
Forging Ties, Forging Passports is a history of migration and nation-building from the vantage point of those who lived between states. In the aftermath of World War I and the Mexican Revolution, migrants traversed new layers of bureaucracy and authority amid shifting political regimes as they crossed and were crossed by borders. Ottoman Sephardi migrants in Mexico resisted unequivocal classification as either Ottoman expatriates or Mexicans through their links to the Sephardi diaspora in formerly Ottoman lands, France, Cuba, and the United States. By making use of commercial and familial networks, these Sephardi migrants maintained a geographic and social mobility that challenged the physical borders of the state and the conceptual boundaries of the nation. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including the JDC Archives, Mays considers the shifting notions of belonging, nationality, and citizenship through the stories of individual women, men, and families who navigated these transitions in their everyday lives, as well as through the paperwork they carried.
This program is part of the webinar series The Latin American and Caribbean Jewish Experience in the Twentieth Century.
Devi Mays, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Judaic Studies and History at the University of Michigan. Her book, Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora (Stanford University Press, 2020) won the 2020 National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Culture, the American Historical Association’s 2021 Dorothy Rosenberg Prize, the 2021 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award from the Association for Jewish Studies in the category of Modern Jewish History: Africa, Americas, Asia, and Oceania, and the 2021 Alixa Naff Prize for Middle Eastern Diaspora Studies.
RSVPWEBINAR:
A Pre-Revolutionary Cuban Memoir and the Creation of Pan-American Jewish Organizations
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
12:00pm-1:15pm (Eastern)
This talk will shed light on the lasting legacy of the early Jewries of the Americas in creating pan-American Jewish organizations. It will illustrate that early modern Mediterranean and Atlantic models of modernity, evidenced by Sephardic Port Jews, first crafted the early Jewish communities of the Americas and then in the 20th century, played a central role in establishing transnational organizations like the JDC and B’nai Brith as pan-American organizations. Centered on a memoir written by Jacob Brandon Maduro in 1954 Havana, the talk will offer a unique hemispheric view of Jews in the Americas, narrated in the aftermath of WWII and the establishment of the State of Israel.
This program is part of the new webinar series The Latin American and Caribbean Jewish Experience in the Twentieth Century
Dalia Wassner, Ph.D. is a historian whose research and teaching is dedicated to integrating the academic fields of Jewish Studies, Latin American Studies and Diaspora Studies. Dr. Wassner is the author of Harbinger of Modernity: Marcos Aguinis and the Democratization of Argentina (Boston: Brill, 2014), is guest-editor of the inaugural issue of Latin American Jewish Studies, and has published her scholarship in numerous academic journals including Contemporary Jewry, Iberian and Latin American Studies, Latin American Jewish Studies, Latin American Research Review, and Modern Jewish Studies. Dr. Wassner serves on the Boards of Directors of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association and the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry, as well as the Editorial Board of the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women in the field of Latin America.
RSVP
