The Road to the ‘Final Solution’, 1933 1941 – Online lecture by Prof Michael Berenbaum

2022 marks the 80th anniversary of “Aktion Reinhard” – the German plan to murder all the Jews of Poland living in the General Government. To mark this anniversary, Galicia Jewish Museum, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and the Ghetto Fighters House invites for a program titled 80 Years After “Aktion Reinhard”: The Industrial Killing of European Jewry – a series of four online lectures given by some of the most recognized scholars in this field, each one focusing on a different aspect of the Holocaust and related to this key event. During the first lecture, Prof. Michael Berenbaum described a landscape of Europe after the outbreak of the war. Providing insight into the military situation, as well as changing policy of the Nazi Germany toward the Jews, Prof. Berenbaum described some of the key moments and decisions which gradually led to what we today know, as the “Final Solution”. Prof. Michael Berenbaum is one of the key experts on the Holocaust. He served (among other) as a deputy director of the United States President’s Commission on the Holocaust, Project Director of the United States Holocaust Museum and the director of its Research Institute. He is also an author of publications, rabbi, and filmmaker. As part of the project “80 Years to Aktion Reinhard: The Industrial Killing of European Jewry. Public on-line series marking the 80th anniversary of the mass killings of European Jews by the Nazi Regime.