2017 Grimm Lecture: Timothy Snyder on the Holocaust as History and Warning

Timothy Snyder, author of the widely acclaimed book Black Earth, says we have misunderstood the Holocaust and the essential lessons it should have taught us. If the Holocaust was indeed, as Snyder’s carefully constructed argument demonstrates, a result of ecological panic and state destruction, then our misunderstanding of it has endangered our own future. The early 21st century resembles the world of the early 20th century more than we realize. Snyder says, if we do not understand the lessons of the Holocaust, an unprecedented crime could become a precedent for the future.

The 2017 Jacob&Wilhelm Grimm Lecture was cosponsored by the Department of Germanic & Slavic Studies, the University of Waterloo Faculty of Arts, the Department of History, and the Joseph & Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies. More info