HIEU 354 Modern German History 1914-Present HIEU 401 Undergraduate Research Seminar
Q: Why did you choose to study German history?
A: All history is contemporary history, but some is more contemporary than others. In our world, the history of modern Germany is certainly one of the most contemporaneous: It matters; it raises, on the collective and individual level, profound moral and historical questions. Now, why did I choose it? When I was an undergraduate, I wanted to study history and I wanted to study an important history, or what I thought was important history. So I decided to do European history and German history. Now I grew up in Israel so certainly German history had some ulterior implications for me. And although until recently, I have not researched the Holocaust, certainly there is some residue of interest, perhaps even fascination, with the Third Reich. Now why do I do German history, and why do I do history is a question that I keep asking myself often. And my answer changes because it is one of these questions that links with one's identity and personality and changing life experience.
Q: What is the best thing about teaching about U.Va.?
A: The students. The students who come to my classes, I think, come because they are interested in the topic. They are usually motivated and they have a certain curiosity as to the historical and moral questions involved. It's a topic that has historical significance but also significance in the present. What I like about teaching at U.Va. is that the students who come, I think that they grapple with these issues.
Q: What universities did you attend?
A: I went to Tel Aviv University for my undergraduate studies and then I was at U.C. Berkeley where I did my MA and Ph.D.
Q: What projects are you currently working on?
A: I am working on a cultural history of traveling in Nazi, West and East Germany between 1933-1989. I am interested in why people travel. Why is it that we are so attracted to this practice of traveling? What do we think we do when we travel? And how people's experiences were similar or not in different political and ideological regimes -- that is, Nazism, Communism and liberal democracy in Germany. I am interested in how each of these three political regimes used traveling to forge a national identity.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: I grew up in Jerusalem. I grew up in a city and a society that has been immersed in history, and it must have had some influence on my own interests. When you are surrounded with so much history, you know also how to appreciate the importance of historical forgetting. It is important to remember the past, but it can easily become a cliché and, worse, a dangerous one. Sometime a little historical amnesia is a requirement for a healthy life: One wishes that peoples in the Middle East will know how to forget and forgive, not only remember. Growing up in Israel certainly taught me that ideas matter. One should take people's values seriously. Although we have economic considerations and practical considerations in life, people have their own values, their own vision of the world. This has to be taken seriously when you want to consider other people, when you want to understand other people. When I think, for example, about my own work about Germans during the Third Reich, the idea isn't simply to condemn but to understand the motivations of people. For this you have to take people's beliefs seriously.
Q: What is your favorite Charlottesville restaurant?
A: Well, my wife is Italian and I'm of Italian origin. So usually Italian restaurants is not something me and my wife go to. However, L'Aventura is a good Italian restaurant. The Metro, of course -- but it is not the student budget. Now my kids like El Pueblo, a Mexican restaurant, so we go there as well.
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