Contemporary Church History Quarterly
Volume 32, Number 2 (Summer 2026)
Conference Report: A Symposium in Honour of Dr. Doris L. Bergen, May 4, 2026
By Martina Cucchiara
On May 4, 2026, a large gathering of scholars, students, friends, and family members convened in Toronto, Canada, to celebrate the retirement of Dr. Doris Bergen, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto. The event was organized by Dr. Tatjana Lichtenstein and Dr. Rebecca Carter-Chand and supported by the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto; the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the Almathea Charitable Foundation; the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Chair of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto; and the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto.
The symposium commenced at 9:15 a.m. at Trinity College with welcoming remarks by Dr. Anna Shternshis, Director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies. The morning and early afternoon featured three panels composed primarily of former graduate students as well as colleagues and supporters of Dr. Bergen, who presented papers on a wide range of topics that reflected the impressive breadth and diversity of research that she has helped shape. Dr. Rebecca Carter-Chand, Director of the Programs on Religion and the Holocaust at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, chaired the first panel titled “Religion in History.”
The first speaker, Dr. Mark Jantzen, Professor of History at Bethel College in Kansas, presented research on the disproportionately high use of slave laborers by Mennonite farmers during the Second World War in the greater Danzig area (present-day Gdańsk) in Nazi-occupied Poland. Mennonite farming families exploited inmates from the Stutthof Concentration Camp, who were forced into agricultural labor on their farms. He showed further that Mennonite ministry and Nazi Party membership often existed side by side within these communities and families.
Dr. Jantzen’s findings build on a growing body of scholarship produced in recent years on Mennonite communities under Nazism, which has demonstrated that Mennonite theology did not necessarily preclude active participation in or support for the Nazi regime.
Next, Dr. Rita Choudhury, Professor of History and Evalyn Clark Chair at Vassar College in New York, presented a paper titled “Religion, Sex, and Silence,” which transported the audience to late seventeenth-century France. She focused on the case of Suzanne Abrie, a nineteen-year-old French woman whose father appealed to both the ecclesiastical tribunal and the Parlement of Toulouse to bring suit against the local curé, Antoine Donadieu, for the kidnapping and rape of his daughter. Using this court case as a lens, Choudhury examined the familial, religious, and institutional networks that enabled the concealment of the crime. In particular, she emphasized and interrogated the silences and gaps in the archival record and in Suzanne’s testimonies in an effort to recover the young woman’s voice and subjectivity.
Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Professor of History at Calvin University (Michigan), concluded the day’s first panel with her presentation, “From Twentieth-Century Germany to Contemporary American Politics: An Unexpected Journey.” In her remarks, Du Mez reflected on the formative influence of Dr. Bergen’s scholarship on German Christians and gender in Nazi Germany during her graduate studies at the University of Notre Dame. Those insights would later shape her own work on American evangelicalism, a movement which she argues has been molded by ideals of militant masculinity, patriarchy, and Christian nationalism. Her studies with Dr. Bergen ultimately informed her acclaimed book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (New York: Liveright, 2020).
After a brief break, the symposium resumed with the second panel of the day, titled “Gender History,” featuring presentations by Dr. Laurie Marhoefer and Dr. Christina Matzen. Dr. Marhoefer, Professor of History at the University of Washington, examined the persecution of transgender women in Nazi Berlin. Drawing attention to a largely overlooked chapter in German history, he showed that the Weimar Republic in fact recognized certain rights of transgender people, issuing permits, for instance, that allowed trans women like Toni Simon to dress in accordance with their gender identity in public. Under National Socialism, however, transgender people became targets of surveillance, persecution, and imprisonment in concentration camps. Recovering these experiences, Marhoefer fills a significant gap in the historical record.
Dr. Christina Matzen, Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, whose work focuses on the imprisonment of women in Nazi Germany, discussed the persecution of Dr. Selma Graf (1887–1942). A Catholic convert of Jewish descent, Graf was a gynecologist who practiced in Bamberg until her arrest and trial in 1938 for purportedly performing illegal abortions. She initially was sentenced to seven years imprisonment, but in December 1942, she was deported to Auschwitz where she was murdered. Her cases raises questions about intermarried Jews, who usually were protected from deportation, as well as about the intervention of the Catholic Church on behalf of Jewish converts.
After a lunch break, the afternoon continued with the panel “Holocaust in Global History,” chaired by Dr. Hilary Earl, Professor of Modern European History and Genocide at Nipissing University. Although Dr. Pragya Kaul Guido, who recently earned her PhD from the University of Michigan, was unable to attend in person, she contributed a recorded tribute to Dr. Bergen. In it, she reflected on her research on the Holocaust and the British Empire, particularly the complex colonial dynamics between Jewish refugees and indigenous Indians under British rule. Dr. Barry Trachtenberg, Professor and Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, presented his research on Curt David Baum, a Jewish teenager who fled to the United States in 1937 but whose parents remained behind in Nazi Germany. The Baums’ correspondence illuminates the complex familial dynamics, strained relationships, and profound trauma that shaped the experiences of a family divided by Nazism. Lastly, Dr. Edward Kissi, Professor of Africana Studies at the University of South Florida, reflected on “The Place of Non-European Observers of the Holocaust in Integrated Holocaust Studies.” He emphasized the significance of the Holocaust for understanding the struggles of decolonization in the Global South and argued for a more globally informed approach to Holocaust education. Such an approach, he suggested, would incorporate the perspectives of non-European observers and underscore the Holocaust’s relevance beyond Europe.
The afternoon concluded with a video tribute featuring Dr. Timothy Langille, Dr. Joanna Krongold, Dr. Lindsay Macumber, Dr. Yu Wang, Dr. Eli Jany, and Lauren Fedewa, whose reflections once more underscored the qualities that have made Dr. Bergen such an influential scholar, mentor, and teacher. It was a fitting end to an afternoon session that showcased Dr. Bergen’s undeniable, seminal impact on so many who knew her across many disciplines.
After a brief pause, the event resumed at the university’s faculty club with Dr. Doris Bergen’s much-anticipated keynote address, “On the Edge of History: The Paths of Others and My Own.” Organized into six thematic sections, the lecture offered both an intellectual autobiography and a reflection on the people and experiences that shaped Dr. Bergen’s distinguished career.
Dr. Bergen began by tracing her family history to today’s Ukraine and to its community of ethnic German Mennonites, whose eventual migration to Canada informed her own interest in ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche), Nazism, the Second World War, and genocide. After recounting her quite accidental encounter with Holocaust studies as an undergraduate on a scholarship in Munich, she reflected on the profound influence of her mentors, M.A. advisor Dr. Annelise Thimme and Ph.D. advisor Dr. Gerhard Weinberg, on her development as a historian. One key principle that informed so much of her own work was Dr. Weinberg’s insistence that war and genocide must be studied together, recalling his observation that “the failure to connect the two has always struck me as in some way making both less comprehensible.”
The quotation was one of several passages read aloud by family members, friends, and colleagues throughout the keynote. By weaving these voices into her presentation, Dr. Bergen underscored the collaborative relationships that have accompanied and enriched her life and scholarship, reminding the audience once more that intellectual journeys are rarely solitary endeavors.
Dr. Bergen’s third theme— “‘You can just come to the edges of it’: The Holocaust Seen from the Side”—confronted the fundamental impossibility of fully comprehending an event that, at its core, resists comprehension. To explore this tension, she turned to poetry, specifically to Czesław Miłosz’s Campo dei Fiori. Written in Nazi-occupied Warsaw in the 1940s, the poem contrasts the ordinariness of daily life with the unspeakable horrors unfolding in the nearby ghetto. The chasm between victims and observers described by Miłosz serves as a reminder that historians may approach the Holocaust from many angles, but they can never completely penetrate the experience of those who endured it. They can only “come to the edges of it.”
Often, scholars look to Holocaust survivors as guides. Survivors have, of course, long played a central role in shaping scholarly understanding of the genocide, and many have also accompanied Dr. Bergen throughout her career. Among those she highlighted was Marijke Brown, whose son, Seth Browne, was present in the audience. At the same time, Dr. Bergen acknowledged that the relationship between survivor and scholar is not without its tensions and complexities.
Also in attendance was Holocaust survivor Nate Leipciger, who read a moving passage from his memoir, The Weight of Freedom. In it, he reflected on how he was only able to acknowledge and speak publicly about the sexual abuse he endured during his horrific experiences in ghettos and concentration camps after hearing the testimonies of survivors of Canada’s residential school system. In her penultimate theme of her keynote, “Common Trauma and Certain Common Loss: Conversations across Lines,” Dr. Bergen drew attention to the importance of reckoning with the intersectionality of histories of violence across time and place while remaining attentive to their distinct contexts.
The symposium and Professor Bergen’s keynote address demonstrated that she has set a high standard for rigorous, accessible, and inclusive scholarship that many scholars seek to emulate. Throughout the day, presenters emphasized the profound impact that Dr. Bergen has had on their intellectual development and careers. Again and again, participants recalled her generosity toward her students, her unwavering support, and her extraordinary investment in their success. It was evident to all in attendance that she has generously shared her time and expertise with so many who have followed in her footsteps. The editorial board of the Contemporary Church History Quarterly congratulates her on her retirement and wishes her well in her future endeavors.
