Never Again: Germans and Genocide After the Holocaust

When it comes to German efforts to confront the Nazi past, conventional approaches tend to focus on solemn statements and well-meant monuments. Andrew Port's book, Never Again: Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust (Harvard University Press, 2023) looks instead at the very concrete ways in which postwar Germans in the East and West embraced the lessons of the Third Reich and the Holocaust, above all in response to other genocides that took place elsewhere after 1945 in places like Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda.

Making the lessons, limits, and liabilities of politics driven by memories of a troubled history harrowingly clear, Never Again is a story with deep resonance for any country confronting a dark past. Port will also address the controversies swirling around German Vergangenheitsbewältigung since October 7, 2023, and especially since the start of the recent war in Gaza.

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Andrew Port is professor of history at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and the recipient of the DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies. He has published numerous articles and essays, as well as three books and an edited volume: Conflict and Stability in the German Democratic Republic, which appeared in German translation as Die rätselhafte Stabilität der DDR; Never Again: Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies; and Becoming East German: Socialist Structures and Sensibilities after Hitler. His latest book, Germany, a brief history of postwar Germany, just appeared with Polity Press. Port served from 2014 to 2019 as Editor-in-Chief of the flagship journal Central European History, and is currently a visiting fellow at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam.

For more information, e-mail [email protected].

Time: 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm CET/GMT+1

Location: Julie Johnson Kidd Hall Cafe

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