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Conference Report: 49th Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 25, Number 1 (March 2019)

Conference Report: 49th Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches

Rebecca Carter-Chand, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The 49th Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches took place March 2-4, 2019. Hosted by the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, this year’s conference theme was “Conflicting Realities of the Holocaust.” Although the conference has evolved over the years to include topics and themes far beyond “the Churches,” it has retained its commitment to interfaith dialogue and reconciliation. This year several papers dealt with issues of religion and related topics, such as rescue, humanitarian aid, and antisemitism.

Mark Roseman’s keynote address examined the Bund (Gemeinschaft für ein sozialistisches Leben), a small German life-reform group that was committed to self-improvement through communal life and education. The fascinating talk was based on his forthcoming book, Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany, and offered a new theoretical model for conceptualizing small acts of assistance, solidarity, and resistance in the context of networks and small groups. During the Nazi years the Bund offered solidarity and assistance to persecuted Jews. Yet Roseman questioned any easy labels, probing the members’ intent, and emphasizing that their lived experience was characterized more by fear of total war rather than of Nazi authorities.

Five scholars whose names will be familiar to readers of the CCHQ offered a nuanced and erudite panel on Christians, Jews, and Judaism. Chaired by Beth Griech-Polelle, the panel addressed different cases of Protestants and Catholics in the 1930s and 40s understood their relationship with Jews and Judaism. Christopher Probst offered a much-needed critical examination of Protestant theologian Adolf Schlatter. Suzanne Brown-Fleming analyzed a collection of correspondence from ‘non-Aryan’ Catholics to the Vatican in the second half of 1938, highlighting these Catholics’ feelings of abandonment and desperation. Kyle Jantzen showcased new research he has done in collaboration with one of his students on the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a dispensationalist evangelical denomination in Canada and the United States. Matthew Hockenos’ paper explored Martin Niemöller and the ‘Jewish Question’ after 1945, emphasizing the change in Niemöller’s thinking over time.

Other papers of interest to this journal included Eileen Groth Lyon’s contextualization of memoirs of priests who had been in Dachau, Kelly Palmer’s investigation of the American Friends Service Committee’s work in France, and Rebecca Carter-Chand’s comparison of the Salvation Army’s assistance to Jews in several western European countries.

This conference, more than some others, offers a platform for scholars at all career stages – this openness has the potential to be its strength going forward. Graduate students presented and senior scholars, such as Martin Rumscheidt, Henry Knight, and David Patterson, offered personal reflections based on their long and distinguished careers in the field. But generational shifts are underway and the future trajectory of the conference is not entirely clear. As the conference organizers look toward next year’s 50th anniversary, they are faced with challenges and opportunities in encouraging the future of Holocaust research.

 

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Conference Report: 42nd Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, May 12-14, 2012

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2012

Conference Report: 42nd Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, May 12-14, 2012.

By Matthew D. Hockenos, Skidmore College

The 42nd Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches (ASC) was held in Rochester, NY, this year on the beautiful campus of Monroe Community College (MCC) from May 12-14. The ASC is an interfaith, interdisciplinary, and international organization founded by Franklin Littell and Hubert Locke, both professors and clergymen, in 1970. Littell, who died in 2009, founded the first doctoral studies program on the Holocaust in 1976 at Temple University, where he taught for many years and where his extensive papers, correspondence, and books are now housed in Paley Library. His wife, Professor Marcia Sachs Littell, a Holocaust scholar at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey and the Executive Director Emerita of ASC, was present at the conference and chaired a thought-provoking panel on “Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women in the Holocaust.” Hubert Locke, Professor and Dean Emeritus of Public Affairs at the University of Washington, opened the conference with a greeting and encouraged participants and Holocaust scholars to think more broadly about the role of racial, religious, and national intolerance and prejudice.

Professor of Psychology Charles Clarke, the 2012 ASC Conference Chair and Director of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Project at MCC, did a superlative job organizing this year’s conference, which consisted of nearly 20 panels of scholars.

In line with this year’s conference theme, “70 Years Later: The Lingering Shadow of Wannsee,” the first plenary session included a presentation by Dr. Wolf Kaiser, Deputy-Director of The House of the Wannsee Conference, as well as a breakout session on “Genocidal Decision-Making and its Implications for Contemporary Genocide.” In addition to the panels on the churches and religion, there were a number of excellent presentations on Holocaust education, arts and literature, reparations, antisemitism, torture, and genocide.

The panels that addressed the churches and religion included a fascinating and troubling set of papers by John Pawlikowski of Catholic Theological University and Marvin Wilson of Gordon College, on the challenge of intractable supersessionary thinking. Willi Graf’s resistance and Emanuel Hirsch’s complicity were the topic of two papers by Stephani Richards-Wilson of University of Wisconsin-Madison and Jeremy Koop of York University respectively. There was a panel devoted entirely to Catholics and the Shoah with two papers addressing Pius XII and one by Joseph G. Kelly, professor emeritus of Nazareth College, on the Rochester Agreement, a joint Catholic-Jewish statement issued in 1996 that encouraged dialogue, respect, and combating religious intolerance. And finally, a plenary session, chaired by Hubert Locke, on “Disputed Memories of Complicity and Righteousness,” which included papers on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemöller, and Rolf Hochhuth by Vicki Barnett, Matthew Hockenos, and Mark Ruff respectively.

The conference closed with a tribute to Richard Rubenstein, a long-time participant in the ASC and acclaimed author and theologian, and a keynote address, “Is the Shoah the Perfect Storm of Genocide?,” by Michael Berenbaum, director of the Sigi Ziering Institute at the American Jewish University.

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Journal Issue Note: Crisis and Credibility in the Jewish-Christian World: Remembering Franklin Littel. The Fortieth Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches. Special issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies 46, no. 4 (Fall 2011)

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2012

Journal Issue Note: Crisis and Credibility in the Jewish-Christian World: Remembering Franklin Littel. The Fortieth Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches. Special issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies 46, no. 4 (Fall 2011).

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The newest issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies is devoted to a single theme: “Crisis and Credibility in the Jewish-Christian World” and is a much deserved tribute to the late Professor Franklin H. Littell (1917-2009). Littel spent his whole career as an academic and a Methodist preacher in overcoming the obstacles and prejudices connected with Christian relations to Judaism. From the time he first went to Germany in 1939, Littell became concerned with the tragedy which befell the Jewish people and the failure of the churches to take a stand against it. This issue of the journal includes numerous articles presented at the 40th Annual Scholars Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, held in 2010. This annual event was started by Littell and Hubert Locke in 1970 as a means of bringing together Jewish and Christian scholars from North America, with occasional guests from Europe. Over the years, these conferences have been enormously productive in overcoming the barriers to inter-religious dialogue, and have particularly contributed to the joint study of the significance of the Holocaust. It was Littell’s conviction that the Holocaust was a Christian tragedy too, and that the theological implications for Christian churches needed to be explored in depth. He would surely have been very pleased with the articles in this commemorative issue, since they amply fulfill his high hopes. Yet Littell was always aware that more remained to be done. The first group of essays in this journal issue is therefore rightly entitled “The Unfinished Agenda” and looks to the tasks ahead.

Particularly interesting are such contributions as those by our co-editors, Kyle Jantzen (co-written with Jonathan Durance) and Suzanne Brown-Fleming, analyzing Christian responses to the initial stages of the Holocaust after the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938. Equally interesting are the papers describing Littell’s valiant efforts in the aftermath to erect warning signals which would alert men and women of good will to the danger of potential genocidal situations. The final section includes personal reminiscences by Littell’s friends, joining in a heartfelt tribute to a Christian leader whose call for respect and understanding of Judaism will undoubtedly be remembered in both church and academy in the years ahead.

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