Building History:   Legal Memory and Contemporary Judgements

               November 8-14, 1998 Ottawa

     Ethnic cleansing, hate literature, genocide,
     killing fields, and xenophobic nationalism are
     contemporary terms evoking echoes of the past.
     As the experiences of today elicit haunting
     images of  previous atrocities, there is an
     urgent need to educate the public about what
     prejudice can and did lead to during the Shoah.

The Kleinmann Family Foundation, and the Institute for
International Affairs of B'nai Brith Canada in
cooperation with the Holocaust Literature Research
Institute of the University of Western Ontario, McGill
University, and the  Association of Holocaust
Organizations, are organizing the third conference,
Building History: Legal Memory, Contemporary Judgements
in this prestigious series.

The pilot conference, Building History: Holocaust In
Education took place in Vienna, March 9-16, 1997.  The
second conference, Building History: Art, Memory, and
Myth took place in Munich, November 9-14, 1997.
Participants included academics, artists, educators,
representatives of education ministries, and Holocaust
organizations from Austria, Canada, Czech, Germany,
Hungary, Israel, Slovakia, Switzerland, and the United
States.

These conferences resulted in two publications by The
University of Western Ontario (London)and McGill
University European Studies (Lang: New York).  A resource
centre in Vienna for dissemination of Shoah resource
materials to eastern European countries subsequent to the
conference was established.

Building History: Legal Memory and Contemporary
Judgements will focus on the  the integration of the
Shoah within North American culture and conscience.  The
challenges is in the representation and transmission of
the events, dissociated by time and space.  A two day
component of this conference will be devoted to war
crimes and human rights law with the goals of identifying
the obstacles that have hindered Nazi war crimes
investigations and domestic prosecutions and developing
effective measures  to prevent those obstacles from
impeding future Nazi and modern day war crimes trials.
War crimes investigators and prosecutors, legal scholars,
government officials and educators will examine and
assess the reasons for the failure of the international
community to deal effectively with Nazi war criminals.
Learning from the mistakes that have resulted in impunity
for the perpetrators of the Shoah will inform us in cases
of contemporary mass human rights violations.
Suggested Workshops and Panels

Web: Memory Site
Borrowed Memory: North American Memorials
Art and Memory: Art or Memory
America's Appropriation of the Shoah
Legal and Political Memory:  Canada and War Criminals
Post-Nuremberg Legal Responses to the Shoah: Cases in
Applied Human Rights
International Cooperation: Possibilities and Limitations
The Future of War Crimes Prosecutions
Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals: Why Continue

Exhibit of survivors' art:  Memory Vectors

Distinguished participants include Irving Abella, Vicki
Bennett, Melvin Charney, Robert Gellately, Phyllis
Lambert, David Matas, and Sybil Milton.


For further information and registration contact:

Naomi Kramer   Tel  (514) 735-3663
                              Fax  (514) 735-3663
                              E-mail    KFF@total.net

The conference will take place in the Department of
Foreign Affairs and International Affairs and the
proceedings will be published by McGill European Studies
(Lang: New York).

Opening reception Sunday November 8, 5:50 P.M., National
Art Gallery of Canada.

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