The Hugo Valentin Lecture 2014: Professor Dan Michman

The Twelfth Hugo Valentin Lecture, titled Beyond "Good and Bad": A Corrective Analysis of the Phenomenon of the Jewish Councils during the Nazi Era, was given by Professor Dan Michman, professor of Modern Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University, Israel.

Professor Michman has published extensively on a wide range of subjects within both Holocaust history and memory. One of his most important works is The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos during the Holocaust (2011), a study that argues for a significant reinterpretation of long-held understandings of the role and rationality of the Jewish ghettos – formed within Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe.

In his lecture, Michman discussed a subject intimately connected to the ghettos: the infamous Jewish Councils (Judenräte) that were the imposed governing bodies of Jewish ghettos and communities. These groups constituted one of the most controversial aspects of Nazi occupation policy, and have been the subject of intense and often emotional debate ever since. The lecture focused on the establishment and implementation of the councils and how they evolved in different communities throughout Europe and even North Africa, and discussed in whose interest the councils and significant elements of them were effected.