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Christians, Jews, and the Rise of Naziism in 1933 

The Nazi rise to power drew immediate reactions from Christians and Jews around the world: enthusiastic support among some Christian Germans, deep shock and alarm among Jews, and uncertainty in interfaith circles about how to respond.

Dr. Victoria Barnett, Frank Talbott, Jr. Endowed Visiting Professor at UVA, will offer a vivid portrait of the religious responses at the beginning of Nazi terror.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Speaker

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Victoria Barnett

Victoria Barnett is one of the world’s preeminent scholars of religion and the Holocaust, as well as a leading expert on the German Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Most recently, Barnett served as Director of Programs on Ethics, Religion and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She is a graduate of Indiana University, Union Theological Seminary (New York), and George Mason University. Her dissertation was a historical case study of the National Conference of Christians and Jews from 1933–1948. She is the author of For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest against Hitler (Oxford University Press, 1992) and Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust (Greenwood Press, 1999), and editor/translator of Wolfgang Gerlach’s And the Witnesses were Silent: the Confessing Church and the Jews (University of Nebraska Press, 2000) and the new revised edition of Eberhard Bethge’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (Fortress Press, 2000). She has written numerous articles and book chapters on the churches during the Holocaust, and is the author of the website article on Dietrich Bonhoeffer published on the Holocaust Museum’s website.

Barnett accepted a University appointment as the Frank Talbott, Jr. Endowed Visiting Professor for the 2022-2023 academic year at UVA.