#AmCon2015 Speakers

 We are pleased to announce our speakers and workshop hosts for the Ambassador Conference 2015. Please keep an eye on this page for further announcements!

Laurence Rees

Historian and documentary film-maker Laurence Rees is one of Britain's most respected experts of the Second World War and the history of the Nazis. In the course of his career, Laurence has not only studied archival resources, he has been able to film ground-breaking interviews with hundreds of people who were affected by the Holocaust, including survivors. His ground-breaking interviews with perpetrators have helped to shape our understanding of the motivations, actions and psychology of participation in mass murder.

Laurence is former Head of BBC TV History programmes and Creative Director of BBC Television History. His most notable works include Nazis: A Warning from History and Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution', the latter winning in 2006 the British Book Awards' History Book of the Year. Laurence is a long-time supporter of the Trust, and has joined many of our events in the past. We are delighted that on Monday 6th July he will address our Ambassador community for the first time.

Mala Tribich MBE

Mala was born Mala Helfgott in 1930 in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland. She spent time in hiding, as a slave labourer in the Piotrokow ghetto and then as prisoner in Ravensbruck and Bergen-Besen concentration camps. After two years recuperation in Sweden with a large group of child survivors, she came to England in 1947 and was reunited with Ben, the only surviving member of her close family. Mala married in 1950 and has two children and three grandchildren.

Bernard Levy

Bernard Levy was 19 years old and a corporal in the British Military when he helped liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945. The scenes that met him at the camp shocked and horrified him so much that he only felt able to speak about it years later.

Due to the typhus epidemic in the camp, everyone going in or out had to be sprayed with disinfectant, which became one of Bernard’s key roles. The horrific conditions in the camp meant that bodies of the dead and the living were indistinguishable. Bernard’s key responsibility was to sort the corpses from the living.

Hugo Rifkind

Hugo Rifkind is a journalist for The Times and was named Columnist of the Year in the 2011 Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, and Media Commentator of the Year in the same awards in 2012. Hugo joined the Lessons from Auschwitz Project visit to Poland in 2011 and has remained an active advocate of the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust.

Rex Bloomstein

Rex Bloomstein is a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on the Holocaust, human rights and crime and punishment. His work in the area of antisemitism and the Holocaust is ground-breaking. Rex’s award-winning documentary KZ has been described as the first postmodern Holocaust documentary.

Professor Robert Eaglestone

Professor Robert Eaglestone is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London and currently the Deputy Director of the Holocaust Research Centre and Deputy Dean of Arts and Humanities. He has published extensively on Holocaust testimony, fiction, historiography and poetry, including in 2001 Postmodernism and Holocaust Denial.

Workshop Hosts

See below for some of the themes being covered - we will be announcing a full list of workshop hosts and titles very soon.

Professor David Cesarani

Area of interest: Britain and the Holocaust

Professor Nikolaus Wachsmann

Area of interest: Concentration camps of Europe 

Professor Rainer Schulze

Area of interest: Non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution

Dr Caroline Sturdy Colls

Area of interest: Forensic Archaeology at Holocaust Sites

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