Description of Dr. Riley’s Lecture
Between August 6 and November 11, 1942, 11,012 Jewish men, women, and children were deported from the internment camps of Unoccupied France to Auschwitz, where most of them were immediately murdered. On the ground in France, an assortment of American humanitarians provided the deportees with food, books, medicine, and emotional support; took their luggage and belongings for safekeeping; and passed along their final messages. These humanitarians also helped decide who would be deported and who would be spared. The shocking role relief workers played in determining who would meet the German deportation quotas was unique in Nazi Europe; nevertheless, as Dr. Riley will argue, it provides an opportunity to reexamine some of the fundamental concepts, like rescue, bystanding, and collaboration, that structure our understanding of the Holocaust.
Dr. Meghan Riley
Meghan Riley earned her PhD in European History at Indiana University. She is especially interested in the intersection of humanitarianism and the Holocaust, which her first book project, 鈥淎 Sword Trembles Overhead: American Humanitarian Relief in the Concentration Camps of Unoccupied France, 1939-42,鈥� explores. During the 2017-2018 academic year she was a Fulbright Fellow in France, and from 2017 to 2019 she was a Saul Kagan Fellow in Advanced Shoah Studies. She has participated in the Global Humanitarianism Research Academy and the Auschwitz Jewish Studies Fellows Program. Her doctoral research has been supported by the American Academy of Jewish Research as well by multiple departments and programs at Indiana University. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Martin- Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University.
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