Timothy Snyder ─ Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning
Published 2016-12-01
Timothy Snyder is the Bird White Housum Professor of History at Yale University, specializing in the history of central and eastern Europe. He will discuss his recent bestselling book Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning.
In this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first. Based on new sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies from Jewish survivors, Black Earth recounts the mass murder of the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible than we would like to think, and thus all the more terrifying.
The Holocaust began in a dark but accessible place, in Hitler’s mind, with the thought that the elimination of Jews would restore balance to the planet and allow Germans to win the resources they desperately needed. Such a worldview could be realized only if Germany destroyed other states, so Hitler’s aim was a colonial war in Europe itself. In the zones of statelessness, almost all Jews died. A few people, the righteous few, aided them, without support from institutions. Much of the new research in this book is devoted to understanding these extraordinary individuals. The almost insurmountable difficulties they faced only confirm the dangers of state destruction and ecological panic. These men and women should be emulated, but in similar circumstances few of us would do so.
By overlooking the lessons of the Holocaust, Snyder concludes, we have misunderstood modernity and endangered the future. The early twenty-first century is coming to resemble the early twentieth, as growing preoccupations with food and water accompany ideological challenges to global order. Our world is closer to Hitler’s than we like to admit, and saving it requires us to see the Holocaust as it was — and ourselves as we are. Groundbreaking, authoritative, and utterly absorbing, Black Earth reveals a Holocaust that is not only history but warning.
Co-sponsored by the Holocaust Initiative at Brown University.
All Comments (21)
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just finished listening to the full series of lectures from prof. Snyder on the history of Ukraine. Such a gift to be able to learn from such great teachers, thank you to the Yale university for sharing their best teachers with us
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Could this happen again? Yes. Whenever critical thinking and discussions are stifled, this can happen again.
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Mind blowing lecture about human nature
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Timothy is right. History never stops
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Loved this guy for some time. Just got done watching, or listening rather to his recent Yale Ukrainian history lectures they uploaded to YouTube. His approach to looking at history and dedication to looking at it using the most accurate facts possible is very similar to how I tend to examine things throughout my life. I've watched a similar talk from around the same time, but his comment in this one on adding causality to the historical facts and stories kinda gave me an "ah ha" moment. I think I tend to do that, so it could be why I can find a lot of educational text/instruction lacking for loss of a better term. I've never been able to put my finger on it, but that may be it. Anyway, I think his work is great and am always thankful to have access to more of it. Thanks
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Very very interesting. Thank you for this.
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Thank you, great lecture. Incredibly timely.
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Immense work that especially helps us in our current times, like his other profetic works or his recent work about the history of Ukraine.
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I just discovered prof Snyder and he's just so great. He makes sense of lots of things I couldn't understand before. I wonder if this logic is applicable to places in Ukraine where Russian soldiers disrupted the functioning of the state for some time and committed mass killings.
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Thank you, again.
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It's a great lecture.
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I am struggling with his concept of “the politics of eternity” Does that exclude the past present and future or embrace them or neither or both
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Maybe I'm just stating an oversimplification, but when certain situations happen, when the right amount or kind of chaos happens, a certain percentage of people are going to act badly. You shake the beehive up enough, the bees begin stinging anything around them, anything they perceive as an outsider.
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Thank you for bringing, Professor Timothy Snyder, to us here on YouTube! - 💛💙Pro-Democracy author of his cogent book, "ON TYRANNY" - Also Timothy Snyder's - Yale School lectures - on UKRAINE are truly phenomenal; (on YouTube).
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Where does this lecture actually begin??
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We (Ukrainians) were faster to react to Russia's acts of information war(along with actual one), since we deal with them for several centuries, their methods have not really changed. This was a very interesting discussion, thank you!
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Thank you for uploading this. In my opinion, professor Snyder's excellent interpretations of geopolitics, however pessimistic they may be, are already proving to be accurate. I would like to nitpick on one detail though. The Reichstag is still called Reichstag when you talk about the building, which Mr Snyder did. The political institution inside, the parliament, is called Bundestag (Federal congress, if you will).
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Honestly, I was overwhelmed ???
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He's an amazing speaker, very engaging and is clearly exceptionally intelligent, and skilled in multiple disciplines, but even though I have more than a passing grasp of the material regarding the Holocaust, which I have studied for 25 years or thereabouts, I barely understand what he's on about for the most part!
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We all have to turn to God and accept his redemption and a new life by Christ our saviour. There is no other way to escape evil and condemnation..
