Thursday, April 24
5:15 pm
In Person at: Visual Arts Complex (VAC) 1B20  (1085 18th Street, CU Campus)
Zoom Registration: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/meeting/register/MYzncRf8QuCossW8tlxoWA#/registration

This talk examines how German Jews used photography to document their lives under National Socialism. Amid escalating persecution, Jews from diverse backgrounds—professionals and amateurs, young and old—produced and preserved thousands of images. These overlooked photographs reveal emotions and perspectives often absent from written sources. Drawing on a database of over 15,000 images, the talk situates photographs within their historical contexts, showing how they reflect and complicate Jewish responses to Nazi Germany. It highlights a new methodology for analyzing photographs as historical narratives, which explores how images shaped and conveyed meaning in times of radical uncertainty.

Ofer Ashkenazi is a Professor of History and the director of the Richard Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of the monographs Anti-Heimat Cinema (2020); Weimar Film and Jewish Identity (2012); Reason and Subjectivity in Weimar Cinema (2010); and he recent (co-authored) Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (2025). He published edited volumes and articles on various topics in German and German-Jewish history including the German anti-war movement, Cold War memory culture, Jewish migration from and to Germany, and German-Jewish visual culture.

This program is part of this year's Yom HaShoah commemorations at CU Boulder. Organized by the Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History. Co-sponsored by the Departments of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures, History and Sociology as well as the Program in Jewish Studies.

Free to the public. No tickets required.