A lecture exclusively offered to ACG students, faculty and staff

Organized by
Department of History, Philosophy and the Ancient World
Deree – The American College of Greece

in collaboration with
ISGAP – Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy

Lecture Speaker
Dr. Christoph Gassenschmidt
Associate Professor, Department of History, Philosophy and the Ancient World
Deree – The American College of Greece

When: Wednesday, September 20, 2023 |14:30-15:30

Where: Room 609 and you may also join the event online (Zoom) here

About the Event

In 2008 the movie Valkyrie (starring Tom Cruise) was released, a movie about Stauffenberg’s attempt to kill Hitler in July 1944. Although this particular act of German resistance was very well known in Germany, it was new to most of the audience in the United States. Certainly, the masses in Germany supported Hitler and the Nazis until the bitter end. However, there were thousands of Germans who did not.

The problem lays in the definition of resistance which was limited to kill Hitler and, thus, end Nazi rule in Germany. However, this definition ignores the fact that thousands of Germans were arrested or executed for their actions which according to the Nazis were illegal such as printing and distributing anti-Nazi leaflets, hiding and saving Jewish people, listening to the BBC, writing V-signs at walls, defying Nazi ideology in public, telling jokes and so forth. The lecture is dedicated to honor these people for their bravery and to keep them in our memory. They deserve their place in history as they clearly showed that everyone who lives in a dictatorship can do something about it.

Bio of the Speaker

Dr. Christoph Gassenschmidt
Associate Professor, Department of History, Philosophy and the Ancient World, Deree – ACG
MA (Magister Artium), Modern European History, East-European History and European Ethnology, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg; D.Phil, Modern European History, Oxford University

Christoph Gassenschmidt joined the History Department of The American College of Greece in 1996. He teaches various undergraduate courses in American and Russian History as well as thematic courses on the Enlightenment, Slaves and Slavery in the US and Modern European Antisemitism and the Holocaust. He is also engaged in the College’s Model United Nation’s (MUN) Club where he serves as the Academic Advisor. He is also running a lecture series in conjunction with ISGAP (Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy) and has become an ISGAP Research Fellow. His current research focuses on Modern Antisemitism and the Holocaust. Dr. Gassenschmidt has published and presented papers on various international conferences and seminars on American, Russian and German History and Holocaust Studies.

For more information, please contact College Events-Office of Public Affairs, [email protected]