NC Jewish Studies Seminar welcomes Carina Brankovic (University of Oldenburg) "Staying Human in Inhuman Times: Resistance in George Tabori's Holocaust Plays"

Dr. Carina Brankovic is a Research Associate in Religious Studies at the Institute of Protestant Theology, the University of Oldenburg. She was trained in Religious Studies, Protestant Theology and Jewish Studies at the University of Heidelberg, the College of Jewish Studies Heidelberg and the University of Zurich. She completed her PhD. on George Tabori (1914-2007), a Hungarian born Jewish writer and theater director. Her doctoral thesis addresses ritual and religious constructions in Tabori's Holocaust play "The Cannibals" (New York City 1968) and "Die Kannibalen" (West-Berlin 1969). Her interests focus on the post-Holocaust German-Jewish theater as well as on Material Religion, especially the representation of religion(s) in museums. Abstract: Jewish émigré writer and theater director, George Tabori, 1914 (Budapest) - 2007 (Berlin), a Holocaust survivor, has emerged in recent years as a pivotal figure in postwar German-Jewish literature. The Cannibals (1968) / Die Kannibalen (1969), dedicated to the memory of his father who perished in Auschwitz, shifts between the murdered fathers in Auschwitz (1944-45) and ten sons and two survivors, who reenact camp life (1968-69), a play within a play. Most of the inmates, forced to carry out cannibalism by the perpetrator Schrekinger, refuse to the end to eat from their fellow inmate (who came incidentally to death). Having made a moral choice, they are sent to their death.