Book launch for History lecturer at the Wiener Library

Dr Neil Gregor introduced his new book, Haunted City: Nuremberg and the Nazi Past after 1945 (Yale University Press, 2008) at a packed book launch held at the Wiener Library in London.

The book asks how a city that became a symbol of one of the worst genocidal regimes in human history lives on after those times,  and what becomes of its inhabitants, in their psychology and daily lives? It explores how the Nuremberg community has confronted the implications of the genocide in which it participated, while also dealing with the appalling suffering of ordinary German citizens during and after the war. Neil Gregor's compelling account of the painful process of remembering and acknowledging the Holocaust offers new insights into postwar memory in Germany and how it has operated.

The event was attended by so many people that there was standing room only by the time his talk began. There was wine afterwards and a chance for people to network and socialise. Among Southampton colleagues who attended the celebration were Dr Tim Grady (ex-Parkes Institute scholar now lecturer at Chester University), Dr Shirli Gilbert and Frances Clarke from the Parkes Institute, Dr Kendrick Oliver and Professor George Bernard from History and Katherine O'Brien, Associate Director of development and Alumni Relations. The Wiener Library, one of the world's leading and most extensive archives on the Holocaust and the Nazi era awarded Dr Gregor the prestigious Fraenkel Prize for Contemporary History for Haunted City. The Fraenkel Prize has two categories, one for established writers and one for first-time writers. Neil has become the first person to win both prizes, after winning the first-time writers' award in 1996 for Daimler-Benz in the Third Rhwsh.