Lunchtime Lecture: The Holocaust as an Australian Story

Join us online for this fascinating lecture by Dr Jan Láníček on Australians' responses to the Holocaust. Dr Jan Láníček will offer a novel perspective focusing on family connections between Australia and Europe.

Around 9,000 Jewish refugees arrived in Australia before the war, but almost all of them left close relatives behind in Europe, in some cases even their spouses, husbands, parents, or children. After their arrival the recent immigrants managed to establish networks that facilitated the spreading of information about the progressing persecution in Nazi Europe. Furthermore, the recent refugees attempted to use family connections to bring their relatives to Australia, or support them in other ways when the immigration routes closed.

Dr Láníček is a Senior Lecturer in Modern European and Jewish History at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is currently completing a study of post-Holocaust judicial retribution in Czechoslovakia and also researches Jewish migration to Australia before World War II.