U of M Center for Jewish Studies Lecture SeriesOfer Ashkenazi Presents: Paying Attention at the End of the World: 1930s Photographs by German Jews

In hindsight, the early 1930s marked the erosion and eventual collapse of liberal democracy in Germany. For those living through these years, however, the trajectory was far from certain. For German Jews—cast by the National Socialists as an existential threat to the nation—the question of the crisis’s true nature, and of democracy’s prospects, was especially urgent. This talk examines German Jewish responses to this pivotal moment through private photographs taken in the early 1930s. Private photography had become widespread in Germany, and its practitioners were increasingly aware of its power to convey ideological convictions and to shape both memory and self-perception. These images reveal how Jews sought to interpret and confront a shifting political, social, and cultural landscape—and to anticipate what lay ahead. Read as commentary on individual experience, private photographs allow us to recover the otherwise unrecorded emotions, beliefs, and behaviors of German Jews during these critical years.

Ofer Ashkenazi is Ben-Eliezer Professor of Modern History and Director of the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His recent publications include the monograph, Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (2025, with Rebekka Grossmann, Sarah Wobick-Segev, and Shira Miron), and the co-edited volume, Rethinking Jewish History and Memory through Photography (2025, with Thomas Pegelow Kaplan).

Cosponsors: Center for German & European Studies, Department of Art History, Department of Communication Studies, Department of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, Department of German, Nordic, Slavic, & Dutch, Department of History, Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication