Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, in partnership with Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, invites you to a public talk by historian Prof. Rolf Wolfswinkel.

About the event

During a research visit to the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, Prof. Wolfswinkel made an unexpected discovery: a thin folder of letters from the German Occupying Administration detailing how Dutch libraries were to deal with the books and films of Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front.

Although Remarque himself had escaped to the United States, his work became the target of systematic censorship. The responses of librarians and library boards offer a revealing insight into how institutions and individuals attempted to accommodate — and survive — even the most extreme ideological demands.

This talk explores censorship, compliance, and moral choice under occupation, using this archival find as a lens onto broader questions of power and resistance.

About the speaker

Prof. Rolf Wolfswinkel is a retired Professor of Modern History at New York University and the University of Cape Town. Born in Amsterdam during the Second World War, he has published extensively on trench warfare in the First World War, the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and the Holocaust. He has served as a guest lecturer in the United States, South Africa, and the Netherlands.