The aftermath of two of the century's most devastating examples of ethnic cleansing and racial oppression -- the Holocaust and South African apartheid -- will be explored at an international gathering of government officials, human rights activists, scholars and survivors taking place on campus Sunday-Tuesday, Feb. 8-10.
Titled "Searching for Memory and Justice: The Holocaust and Apartheid," the conference is hosted jointly by the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale, which includes more than 3,800 testimonies of survivors and witnesses, and by the Law School's Orville H. Schell Jr. Center for International Human Rights, which promotes research into and discussion of human rights issues worldwide.
"We are making no attempt to compare these two very different events," says Joanne Rudof, archivist for the Fortunoff Video Archive, "but we hope to increase our understanding of both by considering the two traumatized and oppressed populations together."
"One of the biggest issues regarding human rights abuses is: What do you do afterward? How does a society recover?" says Rosa Ehrenreich, associate director of the Schell Center. "At one extreme, you insist that you must prosecute and punish human rights abusers, under the theory that a society can't heal unless there is accountability. At the other extreme, you more or less push all past abuses under the carpet, on the theory that society needs to put the divisive past behind it in order to move on.
"Then," she continues, "there is a middle road, such as South Africa is taking with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. You investigate and acknowledge the crimes that were committed, but you don't punish those who admit their abusive acts, and then you try to move on. This conference will explore different responses to dealing with such grave abuses as genocide and systematic racial oppression."
The conference will feature three sessions. The first, on Sunday, will be held in the Law School, 127 Wall St. This session will begin with keynote addresses at 9:15 a.m. by a member of South Africa's Ministry of Justice and by Holocaust scholar Saul Friedländer.
As a child during World War II, Friedländer was hidden in France to protect him from Nazi persecution. He has written about the Holocaust in such works as "Nazi Germany and the Jews, Vol. 1: 1933-1939" (which recently won the National Jewish Book Award), "Reflections of Nazism" and "Pius XII and the Third Reich." He currently holds the first endowed chair for Holocaust studies in the United States, the 1939 Club Professorship of the History of the Holocaust at the University of California at Los Angeles, and is also the Maxwell Cummings Professor of Modern European History at Tel Aviv University.
Following the keynote addresses, there will be a panel on "Hearing the Victims," followed by a screening and discussion of videos of survivors' testimonies from Yale's Fortunoff Video Archive and South Africa's Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. Next, there will be a screening of excerpts from the trial of Adolph Eichmann, who engineered the Nazis' mass murders, and from the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. The discussion will then focus on "Conceptions of Justice."
The sessions on Monday and Tuesday will be held at the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, 80 Wall St. Due to limited seating, tickets for these sessions will be available in advance of the conference at the Schell Center in the Law School.
Monday's program includes three panel discussions -- two looking at the "possibilities and impossibilities" of achieving reconciliation and healing the victims of the Holocaust and apartheid, and a third session focusing on "Future Generations." The day will conclude with a dramatic reading of "Remnants," a play by Henry Greenspan of the University of Michigan that is based on survivors' testimonies.
Tuesday's program marks the 15th anniversary celebration of the Fortunoff Video Archive. In addition to discussions on research and classroom use of video testimonies, the program will include a session titled "Reflections."
The conference is sponsored by the Charles H. Revson Foundation, which recently gave $250,000 to support the work of the Fortunoff Video Archive (see related story, page X), by Alan F. Fortunoff and by the following campus organizations: the Schell Center; the Yale Child Study Center; the departments of English and French; the judaic studies program; the Kempt Fund (administered by the Provost's Office); and the Slifka Center.
For further information about the conference, or for a complete schedule of events, call 432-1729.
In conjunction with the conference, there will be an exhibit of items from Yale's collections of Holocaust and apartheid materials Feb. 2-March 1 at the Sterling Memorial Library, 120 Wall St. The display will include posters, photographs, "Yizkor" books and a ballot from South Africa's 1994 elections.