Lisa Silverman: The Postwar Antisemite. Culture and Complicity after the Holocaus
Schedule
Tue Jun 09 2026 at 06:30 pm to 08:00 pm
UTC+02:00Location
Jüdisches Museum Wien | Wien, WI
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📚 Book PresentationLisa Silverman:
The Postwar Antisemite.
Culture and Complicity after the Holocaust
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📆 Tuesday, 9 June 2026, 18:30
📍 Jewish Museum Vienna, Dorotheergasse 11, 1010 Vienna
🎟 Please register via ➡ https://www.jmw.at/jart/prj3/jmw/main.jart?reserve-mode=reserve&content-id=1667764740022&rel=de&tid=1771512538433
💬 English
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In "Anti-Semite and Jew", Jean-Paul Sartre famously wrote, “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.” With this claim, Sartre suggested that the Antisemite alone – a figure seemingly separate from both the writer and his audience – is responsible for creating and perpetuating negative stereotypes about Jews. After the Second World War, this constructed figure became a powerful cultural tool, enabling Austrians, East and West Germans, and others to distance themselves from antisemitism and to redefine personal and national self-identification. Long before the Nazi persecution of Jews became a central moral paradigm in popular culture, the figural Antisemite played a pivotal role in the narratives of trials, films, and literature that allowed anti-Jewish biases to endure, even as openly expressing such views became socially unacceptable.
Lisa Silverman is Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She specialises in modern German and Austrian Jewish cultural history, with a focus on antisemitism, gender, and visual culture. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) and the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften (IFK); in 2022 she served as Michael Hauck Visiting Professor for Interdisciplinary Holocaust Research at the Fritz Bauer Institute for the History and Impact of the Holocaust at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main. The Postwar Antisemite: Culture and Complicity after the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2025) is her latest monograph. She is also author of Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars (Oxford University Press, 2012) and co-author of Holocaust Representations in History: an Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2015).
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The book presentation will be followed by commentaries from Éva Kovács (VWI) and Michael L. Miller (CEU).
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By participating, you agree to the publication of photos, video and audio recordings made during the event.
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In cooperation with:
Jüdisches Museum Wien / Jewish Museum Vienna
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Where is it happening?
Jüdisches Museum Wien, Dorotheergasse 11, 1010 Wien, Österreich, Wien, AustriaEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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