A poster designed by Sara Jaskiel for a UN exhibition about the March of the Living. Source: March of the Living.

As part of the Death Marches: Evidence and Memory exhibition events series, we are pleased to announce a virtual panel of speakers who will discuss different ways of commemorating the death marches, including pilgrimages, memorials at former Nazi camps and other sites of significance, and artistic and photographic responses to such sites.

We welcome anyone interested in learning more about the latest scholarship in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies to attend.

About the Panel

Professor Tim Cole is Professor of Social History and Director of the Brigstow Institute at the University of Bristol. His research ranges over histories and geographies of the Holocaust and its representation and memory, environmental histories, digital humanities and co-produced and interdisciplinary research practices. His most recent books are About Britain (2021) and Holocaust Landscapes (2016).

Ms Angela Gluck has worked as a teacher trainer, broadcaster, curriculum developer and consultant to schools and local authorities—specialising in equality and diversity. Angela teaches children, young people and adults across the Jewish community and is the author of over 40 books on aspects of religion and history, including the award-winning Holocaust: The Events and Their Impact on Real People. She has led several study tours in Polish-Jewish history and been involved with March of the Living (MOTL) UK since its inception, acting as senior educator for groups of adults, young professionals and students. Her presentations include a one-hour programme Voices of Belsen, to commemorate the 75th anniversary, and Stories from the Darkness, about the righteous. She is a vigorous trustee of The Separated Child Foundation, which supports lone refugee youth.

Dr Andrew Mycock is a Reader in Politics at the University of Huddersfield and Director of External Engagement. His key research interests also concern post-imperial identity politics in the UK, including the ‘Politics of Britishness’ and devolution, English national and regional identity politics, the British ‘history wars’ and legacies of empire, the politics of First World War commemoration in the UK, and the history of British imperial historiography. He also has significant research and teaching interests focusing on youth democratic engagement and participation in the UK, and has published widely on issues including citizenship education, youth party politics, and voting age reform. He is chair of the Kirklees Democracy Commission, President of the Children’s Identities and Citizenship in Europe Association network, and an elected Trustee of the Political Studies Association. He is an experienced policy specialist and is co-chair of the Universities Policy Engagement Network Futures Committee.

Ms Susan Silas is a visual artist. She is interested in the way history intersects the personal and in how identity is formed. Her project Helmbrechts walk, 1998-2003, in which she retraces on foot a 225-mile death march of all women prisoners at the close of WWII, attempts to give voice to the experiences and histories of women during the Holocaust; a history is written almost entirely by Western European men. Helmbrechts walk is analyzed in depth in two books on the Holocaust and in a recent book on the landscape. Helmbrechts walk has been exhibited at Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna, Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim in Germany, Hebrew Union College Museum in New York City, Koffler Gallery in Toronto, University Art Gallery at Stony Brook, and Chatham College in Pittsburgh. Her recent work examines the meaning of embodiment, the index in representation, and the evolution of our understanding of the self. She focuses on the aging body, gender roles, the fragility of sentient beings and the potential outcome of the creation of idealized selves through new technologies.

Professor Jens-Christian Wagner, born in 1966, studied history, geography and Romance languages and literature in Göttingen and Santiago de Chile (M.A.). His 1999 doctoral thesis about the history of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp at the University of Göttingen was published as Produktion des Todes. Das KZ Mittelbau-Dora in 2001. In 2000, he was a guest scholar in the research programme Geschichte der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus (Berlin); from 2001-2014, Director of Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial at Nordhausen; from 2014-2020, Director of the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation at Celle and Lecturer at the Leibniz University of Hannover; and, since October 2020, Director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation at Weimar and Professor for History in Media and Public at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. Professor Wagner has curated several exhibitions and published numerous books and articles about the history of the concentration camps and forced labour in Nazi Germany and about the politics of memory after 1945.