Annual Lemkin Lecture
Featuring Christopher Browning, a Holocaust expert and former Pacific Lutheran University professor
Date: October 14, 2004, 7:00pm
Location: Chris Knutzen Hall, University Center, Pacific Lutheran University
Christopher Browning presents “Holocaust Denial in the Courtroom: The Historian as Expert Witness," marking his 30th anniversary of arriving at PLU. He left in 1999 to become the Frank Porter Graham Chair in History the University of Northern Carolina, Chapel Hill. Browning has testified in several civil cases involving Holocaust deniers, notably the David Irving case in London in 2000. Irving sued an author who wrote a book that said he denied the Holocaust. He lost the suit, in which Browning testified that Irving based his denial on a conscious misuse of historical evidence.
Browning has written several books including the groundbreaking “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 10 and the Final Solution in Poland,” and “The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Anti-Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942.”
In the spring of 2001, he delivered the first George Mosse Lectures at the University of Wisconsin, which are being published as “Collected Memories: Holocaust History and Postwar Testimony.” He is also working on a case study of the Jewish factory slave labor camps in Starachowice in central Poland, based on nearly 235 survivor testimonies.
His presentation is the fifth annual Raphael Lemkin Lecture, presented annually on some aspect of the Holocaust and/or genocide. It is named for Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” and worked for passage of the United Nations genocide convention.
For more information, contact Robert Ericksen, history professor, at 253-535-7591 or ericksrp@plu.edu.
