In an epic story of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder (Bird White Housum Professor of History, Department of History, Yale) presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first. 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.
By overlooking the lessons of the Holocaust, Snyder argues, 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.
This talk is based on Snyder’s recent best-selling book, Black Earth: The holocaust as history and warning (Paperback 2016).