Lunchtime Lecture: Surviving the Holocaust- The Fragility of Psychological Freedom

It was in 1944 when Felix Gluck created the moving image, depicting four of his fellow prisoners in Mauthausen concentration camp gathered around a makeshift menorah to celebrate Hannukah. Acquired by the V&A some forty years later, it continues to raise the powerful and difficult question of what it meant to survive the Nazi camps. To mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2024, the preeminent Holocaust historian Dan Stone will explore in this lecture the psychological arguments for surviving the Nazi camps, looking at inmate physicians in Auschwitz who trained as psychoanalysts. It shows just how precarious the inmates' ability to survive was, and how much depended on luck rather than any innate personal qualities.

Dan Stone is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London. His book The Holocaust: An Unfinished History has just been published in paperback.