Join the first EHRI Webinar on Zoom

Wednesday 23 March 2022, 03:00 PM CET

EHRI invites you to join our first webinar Social Networks and Surviving the Holocaust. This webinar will be presented by Štěpán Jurajda, Mellon Endowment Professor with Tenure at the Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute (CERGE-EI) in Prague, Czech Republic. In cooperation with Matěj Bělín (CERGE-EI) and Tomáš Jelínek (Moravian Business College Olomouc) he performs statistical research on a social Holocaust-related topic.

Topic EHRI webinar

Survivor testimonies link survival in deadly POW camps, Gulags, and Nazi concentration camps to the formation of close friendships with other prisoners. Jurajda, Bělín and Jelínek provide statistical evidence on the importance of the availability of social linkages for the survival of the 140,000 Jews who entered the Theresienstadt ghetto.

In the ghetto 33,000 prisoners died and over 80,000 were sent to extermination camps. They ask whether an individual's social status prior to deportation, and the availability of potential friends among fellow prisoners, influenced the risk of death in Theresienstadt, the ability to avoid transports to the camps, and the chances of surviving Auschwitz-Birkenau. Relying on multiple proxies of pre-existing social networks, they uncover a significant survival advantage to entering Auschwitz with a group of potential friends. Their evidence is thus consistent with the fundamentally selective accounts provided by survivors.

Webinar Series

This webinar is the first in a series of four that EHRI organises this year. We plan to establish a space for discussions on research projects with a relationship to Holocaust data, specific collections and digital humanities. The series is inspired by our experience during the Covid-19 pandemic, which stimulated the organisation of events in a virtual format that provided easy access on an international level. The presenters will come from the EHRI partners, as well as our wider network and Kristel Fellows. The goal is to discuss ideas and projects which can stimulate further research and motivate Holocaust researchers to experiment with digital humanities. The events would welcome scholars including early career researchers from various backgrounds such as historians, archivists, digital humanists, sociologists, and geographers.If you would like more information, you can contact us here.

You can join the first EHRI webinar on Zoom.

Time: Wednesday 23 March 2022, 3:00-4:30 PM CET (10-11:30 AM EDT)

Join the Zoom Meeting by clicking on this link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89337435424?pwd=SEFTKzB0K05iRGN5T1p3SXd1TUpEQT09

Meeting ID: 893 3743 5424 | Passcode: 051978

Image: from the EHRI Terezín Research Guide. Jewish Museum in Prague; Terezín/Theresienstadt collection; Correspondence to and from Terezín; Regulations for postal contact with the ghetto; Instructions relating to postal contact with Terezín (iventory number 185); Postcard from Otto Taussig in Terezín addressed to Jaroslav Taussig.