Professor Oren Baruch Stier
Director , Judaic Studies Program, Florida International University, Miami
Oren Baruch Stier, PhD is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Judaic Studies Program in
the School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University. He is the author of Committed to
Memory: Cultural Meditations of the Holocaust (University of Massachusetts) and coeditor of Religion, Violence,
Memory, and Place (Indiana University). He is currently working on two bookmanuscripts: Holocaust Symbols: The
Icons of Memory and Elie Wiesel’s Testament, from which this talk is drawn. In 2004 he was a Center for Advanced
Holocaust Studies Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He and his family live in Hollywood,
Florida.
From Memory to Oblivion? The Future of the Holocaust
Professor Oren Stier
It is generally assumed that remembering the Holocaust is an ethical obligation incumbent upon every Jew,
survivors and non-survivors alike. But what is to be done as survivors age and pass away, as memories fail or
speakers grow tired? How does one confront the increased urgency of remembering the Shoah “before it is too
late?” This paper will consider the notion of memorial responsibility against its presumed opposite, oblivion, in the
context of a Torah perspective on memorialization in general. Utilizing material gleaned from literature, testimony,
and philosophy, by considering the writings of Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Avishai Margolit, and others, I will present
a snapshot of the present moment in time, as living memory passes into history and culture at large, assessing what
is lost or gained in that process.