Dr. Tomaz Jardim's keynote address will be "Ilse Koch on Trial: Gender, Violence, and Making the 'Bitch of Buchenwald'.” Tomaz Jardim is Associate Professor of History at Toronto Metropolitan University, where he teaches on modern Europe, the world wars, and the Holocaust. Prior to his arrival at TMU, he taught at Concordia University in Montreal and held a fellowship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. His first book, The Mauthausen Trial: American Military Justice in Germany was published by Harvard University Press in 2012, and explores the role of U.S. military commission courts in punishing concentration camp perpetrators. His new book, Ilse Koch on Trial: Making the ‘Bitch of Buchenwald,’ appeared on Harvard University Press in April 2023. It explores how gendered perceptions of violence and culpability drove Ilse Koch's zealous prosecution at a time when male Nazi perpetrators guilty of greater crimes often escaped punishment or received lighter sentences.
2023 Program