The Ackerman Center Podcast

In this episode of the Ackerman Center podcast, we speak with author and Annual Scholar’s Conference keynote speaker Glenn Kurtz about the adaptation of his book Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film into a documentary film titled Three Minutes-A Lengthening. He discusses the path that led him to writing the book and discovering the film amongst his family’s home movies as well as the years of research that he has embarked on as a result.

Glenn Kurtz delivered the 2023 Mitchell L. and Miriam Lewis Barnett Lecture at the Annual Scholar’s Conference.

This interview with Susan Neiman—Philosopher, Author, and Director of the Einstein Forum—and Dr. Nils Roemer was recorded in April 2021. The two discuss her book "Learning from the Germans" which delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. It has been edited to better fit a podcast format.

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Join Dr. Nils Roemer and Belofsky fellows Angie Simmons and Katie Fisher on a walking tour of a few memorials scattered around Berlin. This episode dives into the locations and historical context around 5 prominent local Holocaust memorials in Berlin with a focus on what happened after the end of WWII. Throughout the episode noise of the contemporary cityscape blends with historical references provided by Dr. Nils Roemer.

Find out more about each of these memorials at the links below.

The Deserted Room

The Missing House

Track 17 Memorial at Grunewald Railway Station

The Neue Synagoge

⁠Stumbling Stones (Stolpersteine)⁠

Join Dr. Nils Roemer and Belofsky fellow Katie Fisher on a walking tour of three memorials in Berlin—the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism, and the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism. This auditory experience captures the sound of the present-day cityscape with its traffic and tourist chatter and is layered with historical context and references provided by Dr. Nils Roemer.

Find out more about each of these memorials at the links below.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

In this episode, Dr. Emily-Rose Baker, assistant professor of film studies at UT Dallas, interviews Sabina Vajrača an award-winning film director from  Bosnia and Herzegovina who immigrated to the US as a war refugee at the age of 14. Her work deals with representations of inter-ethnic conflict particularly pertaining to the Bosnian war and genocide—as well as the Holocaust.

Watch Variables here: https://vimeo.com/337351085

On November 9, 1938, a day that has come to be known as Kristallnacht, the Nazis orchestrated an attack against Jews, their businesses, synagogues, and their homes. This was followed by mass arrests and deportations to camps. In this episode, Dr. Roemer and Angie Simmons discuss the events that lead up to the attack, as well as the significance of this day and what would follow.

Dr. Dina Porat, professor emerita of modern Jewish history at the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and the chief historian of Yad Vashem, presented the Einspruch Lecture Series at the Ackerman Center this year. Her recent work focuses on debates around the definitions of antisemitism. In this episode, she and Dr. David Patterson sit down for a conversation.

Join Dr. Nils Roemer and Belofsky fellow Katie Fisher on a walking tour of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site outside of Munich, Germany. This auditory experience captures the sound of the present-day landscape with its birdsong and tourist chatter and is layered with historical context and references provided by Dr. Nils Roemer.

The 2020 Dutch World War II film, The Forgotten Battle, follows the actions of three young characters: a Dutch Axis soldier, a British glider pilot, and a woman affiliated with the Dutch Resistance, as events unfold during the battle in which Allied forces attempted to regain control of German-occupied Zeeland. In this episode, Dr. Emily-Rose Baker and Angie Simmons discuss the film’s representation of this historical event and the Dutch resistance movement.

As it became increasingly clear the Nazis would not overcome the Allied forces and would lose WWII, the Nazis forced survivors of the death camps to march toward the heart of German territory with the idea that they would restart their efforts to exterminate Europe's Jews. In this episode, Dr. Nils Roemer and Belofsky Fellow Angie Simmons discuss the ways in which the death marches signed the end of the Nazi reign of terror but also how it was just the beginning of figuring out what had unfolded during the years of the Third Reich.

The series, "A Year in the Third Reich," explores significant events that took place throughout the years of Hitler's Third Reich. In each episode, we refer to specific primary sources such as newspaper articles, photographs, and maps. To access and download the Primary Sources Handout for this episode, please visit: https://ackerman.utdallas.edu/virtual-outreach.