Holocaust Historian to Speak

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of the international best-seller “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust,” will speak on Tuesday, May 6, at 7:30 p.m. at Battell Chapel, corner of College and Elm streets. A reception for Mr. Goldhagen will follow at the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, 80 Wall St. The event, which is hosted by Yale Hillel, inaugurates the Mark and Bernice Sobotka Yom Hashoah Endowment. The public is welcome to attend, free of charge.

Mr. Goldhagen is an associate professor of government and social studies at Harvard University. His book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” is currently a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was hailed as “a monumental achievement” by the Sunday Times of London. Drawing on archival sources, including testimony of actual perpetrators, Professor Goldhagen maintains that ordinary German citizens from all walks of life collaborated in the killing of Jews both willingly and zealously. A critic for Newsday said that Professor Goldhagen’s evidence is “so overwhelming and his analysis so compelling that his grim conclusion becomes the only plausible explanation for what occurred.”