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Hybrid Book Launch – The Last Transport: The Holocaust in the Eastern Aegean

November 13, 2024 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

The Wiener Holocaust Library is delighted to host a special evening book launch event for Prof Anthony McElligott’s new book, The Last Transport: The Holocaust in the Eastern Aegean. The deportation of 1,755 Jews from the islands of Rhodes and Cos in July 1944, shortly after the last deportation from Hungary, was the last transport to leave Greece for Auschwitz and brought to a close the last significant phase of the genocide of Europe’s Jews (notwithstanding the death marches). Within six weeks of their deportation, the Germans were retreating from Greece and the Balkans as Hitler’s empire shrank.

This last deportation is frequently acknowledged in Holocaust literature but its significance for our understanding of the Nazi genocide of the Jews remains largely overlooked. The timing of the transport, when it was clear to the German military elite that Nazi Germany had lost the war, raises important questions in relation to long-term ideological Nazi goals and the immediate contingency thrown up by war.

The event will be chaired by Sir Richard J Evans, will include a short musical performance by Francesca Ter-Berg, and a panel discussion with Dr Paris Chronakis and Dr Bea Lewkowicz.

Join the event online or in person by registering below. For in-person audiences, the event will be followed by light refreshments.

Event Schedule

6.30-6:40 pm                    Opening introductions and musical performance, Toby Simpson and Francesca Ter-Berg

6.40 -7pm                           Introduction to The Last Transport, Richard Evans and Anthony McElligott

7-7.35 pm                           Panel discussion, Anthony McElligott, Bea Lewkowicz, Paris Chronakis

7.35 – 7.55 pm                  Q&A

8 pm                                    Virtual event ends

8-8:30 pm                          Reception

About the speakers

Anthony McElligott is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Limerick, Ireland. His most recent books are Rethinking the Weimar Republic: Authority and Authoritarianism, 1916-1936 (Bloomsbury, 2014) and (editor with Jeffrey Herf) Antisemitism before and since the Holocaust. Altered Contexts and Recent Perspectives (2017). He was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1999 and to the Royal Irish Academy in 2015.

Francesca Ter-Berg is a cellist, composer & producer originally from Hackney, now based in Margate. Ter-Berg is known for her unique musical style inspired by traditional Yiddish music, improvisation, jazz, dub and ethereal string sounds.

Sir Richard John Evans FRSL FRHistS FBA FLSW is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume The Third Reich Trilogy. His most recent book, Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich was published by Allen Lane in 2024.

Dr Bea Lewkowicz is an oral historian, filmmaker and photographer. Her work focusses on identity, displacement, trauma and loss, often through the lens of her interviews with Holocaust survivors and refugees. She is the director and co-founder of the AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive and Sephardi Voices UK. Among her publications are The Jewish Community of Salonika: History, Memory, and Identity (2006) and Émigré Voices: Conversations with Jewish Refugees from Germany and Austria (2022).

Dr Paris Papamichos Chronakis is Lecturer in Modern Greek History at the Royal Holloway, University of London. His latest book, The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule is forthcoming with Stanford University Press.

Virtual Event guidelines:

  1. The Library will send you a Zoom link and joining instructions via email prior to the event. Please check your junk email folders.
  2. Please try and join 5 minutes before the event start time and we will let you into the room (do try and bear with us if this takes a few minutes).
  3. If you would like to ask a question during the event, please type your question into the chat function, and we will endeavour to answer as many questions as possible during the Q&A. Your webcam will not be seen during this event.

This event is free, although registration via the link below is required. Please note that our free events are run by staff volunteers. Thank you for your patience should we have any technical or audio difficulties. We will do our best to correct them but this is not always possible.

Book now

Venue

The Wiener Holocaust Library
The Wiener Holocaust Library
London, WC1B 5DP United Kingdom
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Phone
02076367247

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