By Raz Segal, Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University

In collaboration with the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the ULB, thanks to the generosity of the late Baron Jean-Charles VELGE.

The International Chair for the History of the second World War organizes annually a series of lectures by a historian who has distinguished her or himself by his or her recent contributions to the field. The Chair has consistently taken pride in honoring scholars who went against the grain with innovative interpretations and endeavored to show that the history of the last global conflict also allows us to understand the contemporary world. The list of laureates of the previous 11 editions highlights this (Timothy Snyder, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Filippo Focardi, Andrii Portnov, Kerstin von Lingen, Pawel Machcewicz, Florent Brayard, Philippe Sands, Giorgos Antoniou, Claire Andrieu, Phillips Payson O’Brien).

For its twelfth edition, The International Chair for the History of the second World War at the Université libre de Bruxelles welcomes Raz Segal in December 2024. Raz Segal teaches Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University, New Jersey. He studied at Tel Aviv University and obtained his PhD at Clark University. His major monograph, Genocide in the Carpathians: War, Social Breakdown, and Mass Violence, 1914-1945 was published by Stanford University Press in 2016 and reissued in a paperback edition in 2020. In this path breaking study, he inserts the fate of the Jewish population of Subcarpatian Rus in the larger context of the policies regarding minorities in the area, from 1914 until 1945, under Habsburg, Czechoslovak and Hungarian rule. The region was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945 and is now part of Ukraine. In his research he endeavors to demonstrate that the genocide of the Jews was part and parcel of a larger European history, thereby shifting interpretative paradigms.

As several laureates of the chair before him, this has also urged him to intervene in the public debate on the israeli invasion of Gaza (see, for instance his recent articles in Time Magazine and Jewish Currents https://time.com/6977457/weaponizing-antisemitism/ and https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide) which, as an israeli historian, came at a great personal and professional cost. Raz Segal is currently working on other regions in southeast Europe, notably western Thrace under Bulgarian rule during World War II. This is part of a book project on the distortion, weaponization, and mobilization of Holocaust history in the reproduction of white supremacy and state violence, including a focus on Israel’s assault on Palestinians from the 1948 Nakba to the current genocidal assault on Gaza.

Monday 9th December from 6:30pm to 8:00pm, "Holocaust Bystanders: A History of the Modern State at War"

Tuesday 10th December from 6:00pm to 8:00pm, "Genocide in the Carpathians: Rethinking Holocaust Studies through a Regional History"

Wednesday 11th December from 6:00pm to 8:00pm, "Stuck in the Twentieth Century: State Violence in the Era of Global Holocaust Memory"

Thursday 12th December from 6:00pm to 8:00pm, "Israel’s Attack on Gaza: The Question of Genocide, and the Future of Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Question"

Auditoire Drion
Bâtiment R42 - Niveau 5 - Local R.42.5.503
Avenue F. D. Roosevelt 50
1000 Brussels

Registration required here

Contact : com.phisoc@ulb.be