International Scientific Conference Women in the Holocaust (ShoahLab)
The Women in the Holocaust is an inaugural conference of WHISC – Women in the Holocaust International Study Center of the Moreshet Mordechai Anielevich Memorial Holocaust Study and Research Center – Givat Haviva, Israel, organized in partnership with the ShoahLab: Holocaust Studies Laboratory IFDT and NGO Haver Srbija at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory 10–12 October 2023. The conference seeks to foster scholarly discussion and debate on the various divides, connections, and intersections that can be found in Holocaust and gender studies about women in the Holocaust.
The conference seeks to draw the attention of scholars to the East-Central Europe region in which German Nazi occupation and racial policies intersected with competing nationalisms, shifting borders, and the sovereignty of nation-states.
The history of the German Nazi persecution, expulsion, flight, deportation, and murder of Jewish and Roma women took place during the Holocaust on the broader map of ethnic and other rifts and conflicts in East-Central Europe, and beyond. The study of gender in the Holocaust confronts the question of how to fruitfully integrate the histories of occupation, antisemitism, and ethnic racism, as well as issues of competing victimhood in the various countries of East-Central Europe remain a research challenge and a point of contention in public and scholarly debate. There are also scholarly challenges when one considers the intersectionality of religious, ethnic, and gender identities and the impact, tensions, and traumas they have produced.
The conference gathers 50 researchers from around the world working in the field of Holocaust and gender studies whose presentations will open to debate on topics of body politics, memories and memoirs, politics and art, identity and resistance.
The event will be photographed and recorded due to publishing on social networks, the website and other information channels for the purpose of promoting the event and activities of the Institute.