Professor David N. Myers, Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History at UCLA, held the Maccabaean Lecture 2019-20: ‘Mass Displacement in the Mid-Twentieth-Century: A Comparative Look at Europe, Palestine, and the Middle East’ (Monday 4 November 2019, 6pm, Old Committee Room, Strand Campus).

The current moment of massive population displacement in the world leads us to seek out historical precedents and explanations. Most immediately, the Second World War and its aftermath come to mind, when millions of people were displaced, rendered homeless or repopulated.

This talk explores one particular strand in this post-WWII history, inquiring whether there was a causal relationship between an act of displacement in one context and another elsewhere. More particularly, the lecture focused on the relationship among three significant population displacements in the 1940s stretching from Europe to the Middle East: first, the phenomenon of European Jewish DPs in the wake of the Holocaust; second, the displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 war between Jewish and Arab sides in Palestine and later Israel; and finally, the dispossession of Jews in Arab countries.

For more information please see the Eventbrite link. (Please note this event has passed)