KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Professor Jan T. Gross
Professor Gross of Princeton University is the author of Neighbors (2001), which reconstructs the events that took place in July 1941 in the small Polish town of Jedwabne, where virtually every one of the town's 1,600 Jewish residents was killed in a single day. He has also written Fear (2006) about Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust, and in August this year his new book, Golden Harvest will be released on the controversial topic of the exploitation of Jewish property after the Holocaust.
Father Patrick Desbois
Father Desbois has devoted his life to researching the Holocaust, fighting anti-Semitism, and furthering the relations between Catholic and Jews. He is the president of Yahad - In Unum foundation, the Director of the French Conference of Bishops for relations with Judaism, Advisor to the Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris, and Advisor to the Vatican on the Jewish religion. He is the author of The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest's Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews.
Professor Dovid Katz
Professor Dovid Katz is an American-born, Vilnius based Judaic Studies professor, Yiddish specialist and Holocaust scholar. Professor Katz is at the forefront of the struggle to expose how the history of the elimination of Lithuanian Jews has become embroiled in political efforts to obscure and distort the truth of the Holocaust in the Baltics.
Dr Stephen Smith
Stephen Smith is Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. He is Director of the UK Holocaust Centre and co-founded the Aegis Trust, the agency engaged in the prevention of crimes against humanity and genocide. He is Chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, the body which runs the national Holocaust commemoration in the UK, which included over five hundred public memorial events in 2009. Dr Smith is in Australia as the ADC Gandel Orator.
Professor Laura Levitt
Laura Levitt is a Professor of Religion, Jewish studies and Gender at Temple University where she directs the Women's Studies Program. She is the author of books including American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust (2007) and Impossible Images: Contemporary Art after the Holocaust (2003). Her work examines the different ways memory is preserved after the Holocaust.
Professor Na'ama Sheffi
Na’ama Sheffi is Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communications at Sapir College, and a member of the College’s research authority. Her recent publications include The Ring of Myths: The Israelis, Wagner and the Nazis (Tel-Aviv, 1999) [Hebrew]; (Brighton, 2001) [English]. She is a regular columnist in Ha’aretz daily, and has experience in teaching on wars, and the role of media.
Professor Raimond Gaita
Raimond Gaita is Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at King's College, London and Professorial Fellow in The Melbourne Law School and the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and has contributed extensively to public discussion about reconciliation, collective responsibility, the role of moral considerations in politics, the Holocaust, genocide and crimes against humanity.