Hey SAJE-niks,
The Spring academic lecture is today at 6 pm, in Harper 103. Professor Bernard Wasserstein will be speaking about his new book, The Ambiguity of Virtue: Gertrude van Tijn and the Fate of the Dutch Jews. There will be food, and disagreement with Hannah Arendt. Hope to see you there!Bernard Wasserstein's The Ambiguity of Virtue: Gertrude van Tijn and the Fate of the Dutch Jews challenges the interpretation of the role of the Nazi-appointed Jewish councils in occupied Europe that was offered by Hannah Arendt in her Eichmann in Jerusalem. The Ambiguity of Virtue tells the story of Gertrude van Tijn's work on behalf of her fellow Jews as the avenues that might save them were closed off. Between 1933 and 1940 Van Tijn helped organize Jewish refugee emigration from Germany. After the Germans occupied Holland in 1940, she worked for the Nazi-appointed Jewish Council in Amsterdam and enabled many more Jews to escape. Some later called her a heroine; others denounced her as a collaborator. Was she merely a pawn of the Nazis, or should she be commended for taking advantage of opportunities to save Jews from the gas chambers? In such impossible circumstances, what is just action, and what is complicity?
