(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)March 21, 2024

The Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies will welcome acclaimed scholar Dr. Esra Ösyürek to Ramapo College on Tuesday, March 26. The Cambridge University professor will speak about her most recent book, Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory & Muslim Belonging in Postwar Germany (Stanford University Press, 2023). A timely discussion, Ösyürek’s talk provides the opportunity to think more complexly about the vital nexus of Holocaust memory, national belonging, domestic statecraft, and international affairs.

Co-sponsors include Columbia University’s Cultural Memory University Seminar, the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies program at Stockton University, the Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center at Stockton University, and Temple Kol Tzedek of Philadelphia.

This free event will be held Tuesday, March 26 at 7:00 p.m. in the Anisfield School of Business Room 136 and is open to the public. Complimentary parking will be provided and no registration to attend in person is required. Visitors should request directions from the booth at the main entrance to campus. Attending via Zoom is also an option. To register for Zoom, click here.

For more information and questions, contact Gross Center director Dr. Jacob Ari Labendz: holgen@ramapo.edu / (201) 684-7409.

About the book

At the turn of the millennium, Middle Eastern and Muslim Germans had rather unexpectedly become central to the country’s Holocaust memory culture—not as welcome participants, but as targets for re-education and reform. Since then, Turkish- and Arab-Germans have been considered as the prime obstacles to German national reconciliation with its Nazi past, a status shared to a lesser degree by Germans from the formerly socialist East Germany. It is for this reason that the German government, German NGOs, and Muslim minority groups have begun to design Holocaust education and anti-Semitism prevention programs specifically tailored for Muslim immigrants and refugees, so that they, too, can learn the lessons of the Holocaust and embrace Germany’s most important postwar democratic political values.

Based on ethnographic research conducted over a decade, Subcontractors of Guilt explores when, how, and why Muslim Germans have moved to the center of Holocaust memory discussions. Esra Özyürek argues that German society “subcontracts” guilt of the Holocaust to new minority immigrant arrivals, with the false promise of this process leading to inclusion into the German social contract and equality with other members of postwar German society. By focusing on the recently formed but already sizable sector of Muslim-only anti-Semitism and Holocaust education programs, this book explores the paradoxes of postwar German national identity.

About the author

Esra Özyürek is the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths and Shared Values at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Being German, Becoming Muslim: Race, Religion, and Conversion in the New Europe (2015).

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About Ramapo College

Ramapo College of New Jersey is the state’s premier public liberal arts college and is committed to academic excellence through interdisciplinary and experiential learning, and international and intercultural understanding. The comprehensive college is situated among the beautiful Ramapo Mountains, is within commuting distance to New York City, was named one of the 50 Most Beautiful College Campuses in America by CondeNast Traveler, and boasts the best on-campus housing in New Jersey per Niche.com. Established in 1969, Ramapo College offers bachelor’s degrees in the arts, business, data science, humanities, social sciences and the sciences, as well as in professional studies, which include business, education, nursing and social work. In addition, the College offers courses leading to teacher certification at the elementary and secondary levels, and offers graduate programs leading to master’s degrees in Accounting, Applied Mathematics, Business Administration, Contemporary Instructional Design, Computer Science, Creative Music Technology, Data Science, Educational Leadership, Nursing, Social Work and Special Education, as well as a Doctor of Nursing Practice.

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