What paradoxes arise when victims of related persecution tell their stories next to, and after, each other? This question is at the heart of Ari Joskowicz’s highly acclaimed book “Rain of Ash” (2023), which examines the unlikely entanglement of the histories of Jews and Romani people—the only two racialized groups the Nazis targeted for wholesale extermination. This lecture explores the encounters between Jews and Romani people on the killing fields of Europe and seeks to understand how survivors and historians have discussed Romani and Jewish suffering during World War II in relational terms.

Joskowicz, who earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago, is a professor of Jewish Studies, European Studies, and history at Vanderbilt University. In addition to “Rain of Ash,” he is the author of “The Modernity of Others: Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France” (2014) and the co-editor of “Secularism in Question: Jews and Judaism in Modern Times” (2015).

All Holocaust Living History Workshop events are free and open to the public, but registration is required:

• In-person
• Virtual

Sponsor: July Galper

About the Holocaust Living History Workshop

This event is a part of the Holocaust Living History Workshop (HLHW) series, an education and outreach program sponsored by the UC San Diego Library and the Jewish Studies program. It aims to preserve the memories of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust by offering public events involving witnesses, descendants and scholars and through the use of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive. Past HLHW workshops are now part of the Library’s digital collections and can be accessed online.