Ithaca College

The annual Holocaust Lecture at Ithaca College will be delivered by historian Peter Fritzsche on Tuesday, October 28.

His talk, "Becoming Nazi: Moral Choice in Everyday Life in the Third Reich," will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Klingenstein Lounge, Egbert Hall. Sponsored by the Jewish studies program, the lecture is free and open to the public.

In his latest book, Life and Death in the Third Reich, Fritzsche argues that Germans made deliberate and knowledgeable choices during that period. As letters and diaries show, Germans grappled with Nazism, incorporating into their lives many elements of National Socialism and rejecting others. He explores the effort that went into acquiring and retaining a Nazi identity, and underscores how much they knew about the Holocaust.

A professor of history at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Fritzsche specializes in modern German and European history. His current research focuses on comparative questions of memory and identity, and vernacular uses of the past in modern Europe. His books include Germans into Nazis, Nietzsche and the Death of God, and Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany.

For more information on the annual Holocaust Lecture, contact Rebecca Lesses, coordinator of Jewish studies, at rlesses@ithaca.edu or 607-274-3556.