The Hugo Valentin Lecture 2019: Professor Doris Bergen

The seventeenth Hugo Valentin Lecture, titled Bodies and Souls: Gender Sexuality and the Holocaust, was held by Professor Doris Bergen, University of Toronto.

Professor Bergen's lecture spread new light on living during the Holocaust through a focus on gender, sex and sexuality. Surprisingly, these themes appear in numerous sources, from survivors' testimonies and sources recorded in ghettos to the Nazi’s own documents. A consideration of gender and sexuality can therefore increase the knowledge of a number of important aspects of the Holocaust. These include the reasons why perpetrators chose to participate in the violence, to the way Jewish victims attempted to maintain a semblance of community, family relationships, and dignity.

Doris Bergen is Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Department of History and Anne Tanenbaum Center for Jewish Studies, University of Toronto. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Academic Committee of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.