Saul Friedländer is a scholar of the Third Reich and the Holocaust who has transformed our understanding of this period by weaving into a coherent whole the perspectives of ordinary Germans, party activists, military and political figures, and, most importantly, victims and survivors.
Drawing from documents, films, recollections, and his personal experience, he reconstructs these events with a judicious tone that defies the nature of the subject and demonstrates the interplay of memory and representation in the interpretation of historic events. Friedländer shows that a rational and many-sided reinterpretation of the evidence deepens a reader’s understanding of the nature, meaning, and complexity of the Holocaust. His works include Pius XII and the Third Reich, History and Psychoanalysis, When Memory Comes, Reflections on Nazism, and Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume One: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939. He is in the process of completing Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume Two: The Years of Extermination, 1939-1945.
Friedländer holds the 1939 Club Chair in the History of the Holocaust at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has held the Maxwell Cummings Chair of European History at Tel Aviv University since 1975.
Friedländer received a degree (1955) from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Paris and a Ph.D. (1963) from the University of Geneva.
Related Speakers View all
![]() |
John W. Dower
Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Tec...
|
![]() |
Herbert P. Bix
Historian, Teacher & Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author
|
![]() |
Gilbert King
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author, Known for "Devil in t...
|
![]() |
Ron Powers
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist & Author
|
![]() |
Yuval Noah Harari
Historian, Philosopher & Bestselling Author of "Sapi...
|
![]() |
Thomas Cahill
New York Times Bestselling Historian and Author of "...
|
![]() |
Annette Gordon-Reed
Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law S...
|
![]() |
Megan Kate Nelson
Writer, Historian & Pulitzer Prize Finalist
|
![]() |
Michael Auslin
Award-winning Author, Historian & Geopolitical Analyst
|
![]() |
Dr. Heather Ann Thompson
Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize Winning Author of ...
|
![]() |
Dan Fagin
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist, Known for "Toms R...
|
![]() |
Elliott J. Gorn
Historian, Author & Professor of American Urban Hist...
|
![]() |
Linda Gordon
Award Winning Author, Historian & Feminist
|
![]() |
Rinker Buck
Award-Winning Author; Known for "Flight of Passage"
|
![]() |
Timothy Snyder
Historian, Author & History Professor at Yale Univer...
|
![]() |
Michael Skakun
Historian, Lecturer, Author of "On Burning Ground",...
|
![]() |
Thomas King
Award-Winning First Nations Writer
|
![]() |
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Noted British Historian, Television Presenter & Inte...
|
![]() |
Robert K. Massie
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Writer & Historian
|
![]() |
S.C. Gwynne
Best-Selling Author, Award-Winning Journalist & Hist...
|