This day-long symposium will probe what remains an under-examined topic in the history of World War II and the Holocaust: the multivarious paths through which ordinary men and women resisted the Nazis. While scholarship on the choices, backgrounds, and motivations of perpetrators and collaborators has become quite robust, it is only in recent years that resistance has received growing scholarly scrutiny.

At this interdisciplinary, comparative symposium, historians and sociologists focusing on a variety of locales from Eastern Europe, to France to North Africa to the Netherlands, will explore a range of subjects that illuminate distinctive paths of resistance, among both Jews and non-Jews. Through their case studies, they will illuminate how factors that include religious community and theology, proximate danger, pre-war political engagement, and social geography could become decisive in the choice and circumstances of resistance.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies, Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies, and the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion. Coordinated by Dr. Ethan Katz, Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies and 2022-2023 Matrix Faculty Fellow.