Identifying the Holocaust with other historical experiences has given rise to a series of debates in the public sphere in recent decades. In Argentina the Holocaust has been a sensitive topic from the 1940s to the present. In this talk, Emmanuel Kahan proposes a history of Holocaust memory and its "uses" in Argentina, focusing on four key moments. One, the time period contemporaneous to the extermination of the Jews of Europe. Two, the 1960s and polemics in Argentina about antisemitism and the conflict in the Middle East. Three, the period of the last military dictatorship (1976-83) and the subsequent "return to democracy," when the Holocaust became a global metaphor for human rights violations. Four, the contemporary moment, defined by the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and the right-wing presidency of Javier Milei. Looking at each of these moments offers us a view on the wide range of actors in Argentina who have made use of the Holocaust in matters of national public debate and the diverse meanings it has accrued.
Emmanuel Nicolás Kahan, PhD in History and Master in History and Memory from the National University of La Plata, is a researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research of Argentina. Professor of the Department of History of the Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences (National University of La Plata), he has also offered postgraduate courses in various study houses in the country and abroad. He is coordinator of the Center for Jewish Studies based at the Institute for Economic and Social Development (NEJ-IDES) and Director of the Diploma in Memory, Recent History and Human Rights at CLACSO. He has published various books and articles on Jewish life in Argentina, the reception of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the same country, and the memory of the Holocaust. He is a visiting researcher at the Shoah Foundation (University of Southern California), a fellow at the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (Berlin) and was a Visiting Professor at the University of Ottawa (Canada). Since 2015 he has directed the collection of digital books "Among the books of good memory" co-published by Editions of the National University of General Sarmiento and the Faculty of Humanities and Educational Sciences of the National University of La Plata. In 2013 he received the Best Dissertation Award given at Texas University (Austin) by the Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA) and in 2015 the Scientific Work Award from the National University of La Plata.
Monday, November 18 @ 5:00-6:30pm
3335 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley campus
RSVP Here.
Co-sponsors: Berkeley Center for Jewish Studies; Berkeley Department Of Spanish & Portuguese