WWU’s Ray Wolpow Institute to Host Devin Naar for ‘From the Ottoman Empire to Auschwitz’ May 11 in Bellingham

Western Washington University’s Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity will host the University of Washington’s Devin Naar for “From the Ottoman Empire to Auschwitz: The Mediterranean Jewish Experience of the Holocaust.”

The lecture, which takes place at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 11 at Congregation Beth Israel, 751 San Juan Blvd., in Bellingham as part of the inaugural regional institute for higher education faculty that the Wolpow Institute is organizing in partnership with the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University that weekend. 

This event is free and open to the public and is made possible through the generous support of Bernhard Kohlmeier & Lisa Ann Mikulencak, David Goldman & Linda Blackwell, Western Libraries, Congregation Beth Israel, The President's Office, Office of the Provost, University Residences, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Modern & Classical Languages, Department of Global Humanities & Religions.

Although usually understood as a “European” event, the Holocaust also resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Sephardic Jews born in the predominantly Muslim world of the Ottoman Empire (Greece). Grappling with the particularities of their experiences compels us to expand the scope of the Holocaust into the eastern Mediterranean and to recognize the interconnections between the rise of Hitler’s empire and the making of the modern Middle East.

Devin Naar is the Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies at the University of Washington. He is the founder of the Sephardic Studies Program at the UW and currently its acting chair. He is an associate professor of History and faculty at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the UW. Naar’s first book, “Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece,” was published by Stanford University Press in 2016 and won a National Jewish Book Award the same year.

A shuttle to and from campus is available to students for this event on a space-available basis. To request transportation, disability accommodation, or if you need additional information, contact Sheila Pennell of Western Washington University’s Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at sheila.pennell@wwu.edu by May 1.