Jewish Survival and Holocaust Memory: Salo Baron and the Twentieth Century

Franke Visiting Fellow Lecture
James McAuley

This talk will examine the life and thought of Salo Baron, one of the great twentieth-century historians who was among the first to bring Jewish Studies to the American university. The talk will trace Baron’s commitment to rebutting the so-called lachrymose conception of Jewish history by emphasizing the theme of survival, but it will also examine that critique in the context of Holocaust memory that gradually began to emerge after the Second World War.

James McAuley is a contributing columnist for The Washington Post writing on European affairs. During his Franke Fellowship at the Whitney, he is continuing research on his next book, “Black Milk of Dawn.” While at Yale, he will also be finishing a short biography of the Zionist benefactor Edmond de Rothschild, for the Jewish Lives biography series at Yale University Press. This follows the publication in 2021 of his first book, The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France, also with Yale University Press. He earned his PhD in Modern European History at Oxford in 2016, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar.