Race Science & All That Jazz: Dr James Smith CBE and Rabbi Eli Levin

Race Science & All That Jazz: Dr James Smith CBE, Rabbi Eli Levin and guests.

In partnership with South Hampstead Synagogue, Aegis Trust and the United Synagogue

Catch up on the live stream above!

Did you have any idea of the Jewish and black peoples' shared history of persecution? To a large degree, we can ascribe it to so-called "Race Science" and "Eugenics". 

In the run-up to Holocaust Memorial Day 2021, watch Dr James Smith CBE, co-founder and Life President of the National Holocaust Museum, live from the Museum in conversation with an array of guest experts on this vast subject.

They will explain how these bogus theories helped cause three of the 20th Century's genocides, including the Holocaust; how they were used to justify colonialism; and how they united the persecution of both black and Jewish people in a single fake ideology.

This twin hatred revealed itself most clearly in the 1930s when the Nazis outlawed Jazz as the "degenerate" creation of blacks and Jews.

After a striking music-themed introduction, James and his guests present the pre and post-history of the Nazi jazz ban, including the sterilisation of mixed race so-called ‘Rhineland Bastards’; the Sons of Noah theory and its part in the Namibian and Rwandan genocides; and the legacy of ‘White Supremacism’ today.

Rabbi Eli Levin begins the evening with this year's HMD theme of 'Be the light in the darkness' and a brief candle-lighting memorial ceremony, live from South Hampstead Synagogue in London. 

We were thrilled to welcome:

Peter Brathwaite: Operatic baritone, advocate of suppressed voices and creator of Degenerate Music: Music Banned by the Nazis.
Professor Maiken Umbach: University of Nottingham's Professor of Modern History. Expert on National Socialism and photography under the Third Reich and co-creator with the National Holocaust Centre & Museum of the national touring VR-vased exhibition The Eye As Witness, which premiered at South Hampstead Synagogue in January 2020.
Dr Efram Sera-Shriar: Senior Researcher, Science Museum Group. Expert historian of race, anthropology and folklore.
Subhadra Das: Historian, comedian, writer and museum curator. Curator of the UCL Science Collections, who uses museum objects to tell decolonial stories in engaging and affirming ways. Currently on secondment researching Critical Eugenics at the UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre. 
Freddy Mutanguha: Teenage survivor of the Rwandan genocide and Executive Director of the Aegis Trust. Leads Aegis’ peace education programme in Rwanda and its extension to areas at risk including the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Kenya.
Dr Martin Stern MBE: Dutch-born Holocaust survivor & speaker, dear friend of the National Holocaust Museum, and one of only ten Holocaust survivors to feature in The Forever Project.
Dr Joe Mulhall: Senior Researcher at HOPE not hate, author of British Fascism After the Holocaust and trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
Professor Kurt Barling: Middlesex University Professor of Journalism, writer and broadcaster.