Fewer topics have been more studied than the Holocaust (Shoah). The rise, fall, and legacies of the Nazi extermination of six million Jews remain one of the most consequential events of our time. Yet despite thousands of books, films, songs, and podcasts, we know surprisingly little about how the Holocaust and its afterlives impacted African activists and historians. This panel wishes to explore the varied ways in which African and Jewish experiences intersected and collided during the Holocaust and throughout the postcolonial world. In this panel, we wish to create new ways of thinking about how Africans reworked the legacies and histories of the Holocaust into the continent’s most critical moments throughout the twentieth century. Topics may include, although are not limited to: 1) Namibian Genocide of the Second Reich; 2) African diaspora in interwar Germany; 3) Numerus Clausus in North Africa; 4) Ethiopian Judaism; 5) Jewish histories in Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda, including World Zionist Organization in Kenya; 6) Holocaust discourse during the Nigerian Civil War; 7) Memory Work and the Rwandan Genocide; 8) The 1967 Arab League Summit (Khartoum).
Please email a paragraph summary of your intended paper to Jon Earle, jonathon.earle@centre.edu, by 12 March.
