Conversion during the Holocaust

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

The experience of converts from Judaism during the Holocaust is oft overlooked by scholars, who assume that converts’ Holocaust experiences mirrored that of their communities of origin. Our roundtable seeks to direct new attention to this understudied populations experiences of the Holocaust. Participants in this virtual roundtable will explore and expand upon themes that they considered in a written roundtable on conversation during the Holocaust that will appear in the Winter 2024 AJS Perspectives, The Conversion Issue. During the virtual roundtable, participants will focus on themes that were not discussed (due to space), things learned since submission of our written work in summer 2024 and will directly respond to each other’s scholarship. The interdisciplinary roundtable will address questions such as: How can we define conversion especially in the context of genocide? Who counts as a convert? What were these converts’ motivations for converting? Why is it important to study the experience of converts when studying the history of the Holocaust? What roles do we see converts from Judaism playing in larger questions, issues, and trends in modern Jewish history?
Roundtable participant Angela Botelho will further explore the application of contemporary translation theory, or “cultural translation” as Homi Bhaba puts it as “the act of living on borderlines,” to her own German Jewish family’s conversion experience and its aftermath. Ion Popa will explore conversion in the context of a period of secularization and will also the explore typologies of converts, especially important given that many converts returned to Judaism after the Holocaust and much of the normal conversion proceedings were abrogated or entirely done without. Yaakov Ariel will explore the fact that the conversion phenomenon did not end when the war was over. Many converted at the end of the war.
The roundtable will be moderated by Daniela Weiner, who is in the earlier stages of a new project on individuals who converted to Catholicism and their experiences of Holocaust, drawing on the newly opened Vatican and Jesuit archives from that period.

Sub Unit

• Holocaust Studies

Moderator

• Daniela Weiner, Stanford University

Discussants

• Angela Botelho, Graduate Theological Union

• Ion Popa, University of Manchester

• Yaakov Ariel, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 04