The Holocaust Historian and Documentarist Joseph Wulf (1912–1974)

October 10, 2024 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the historian Joseph Wulf (1912-1974). Inspired by this anniversary, The House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Center, working in cooperation with the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow, the Centre Marc Bloch, and the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, will hold an international conference dedicated to one of the pioneers of Holocaust research.

Through readings as well as Yiddish songs and films, we shall seek to gain a closer understanding of Joseph Wulf the individual while identifying the perspectives his work offers today for interpreting both history and our contemporary age. Lectures and discussions will present his central research topics, his documentary method and writing styles, but will also address the impact and reception of Wulf’s work. The conference will focus on the research conducted in recent years on the significance of survival scholars in general and Joseph Wulf in particular. At the same time, it will enable an interested public beyond the specialist disciplines to become acquainted with new approaches to his work.

Combining witness knowledge and scholarship, Wulf’s life work not only sheds light on the perpetrators of the Shoah and their actions but has also created a literary monument to the destroyed world of Eastern European Jews.