The Hugo Valentin Lecture 2007: Professor Nechama Tec

Comparing Jewish and Non-Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust and World War II

Prof. Nechama Tec

University of Connecticut at Stamford

The Fifth Annual Hugo Valentin Memorial Lecture was held on 13 February 2007 by Nechama Tec, professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut at Stamford. One of the world’s leading Holocaust scholars, Professor Tec has analyzed the sociology of human interaction under conditions of severe crisis, including times of genocidal violence. Often basing her analyses on interviews with Holocaust survivors, Prof. Tec has studied the intricate relationships between self-preservation, compassion, altruism, rescue, resistance and cooperation. The author of many books, among her most prominent are Defiance: The Bielski Partisans (1993), a study of that famous Jewish resistance group in Byelorussia during the Holocaust, as well as When Light Pierced the Darkness. Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland (1986). Her latest book, Resilience and Courage. Women, Men, and the Holocaust examined the significance of gender relations within Jewish resistance groups, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. Tec is a member of the President’s Council of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., and serves on the Academic Advisory Committee at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the same institution.