LRE Conference
speakers
Dietmar Nietan
Member of the German Bundestag Dietmar Nietan is the Coordinator of German-Polish Intersocietal and Cross-Border Cooperation, an office established in 2004 to strengthen the good-neighbourly ties between the two countries. Mr Nietan was appointed on 9 March 2022 and is responsible for helping the two societies further enhance their ties and to advance joint German-Polish Projects.
Since entering the German Bundestag in 1998, Dietmar Nietan has been closely involved in German-Polish relations in various capacities, including 12 years as Chair of the Federal Association of the German-Polish Society.
Dietmar Nietan is also a member of the LRE Foundation Supervisory Board.
Andrea Despot
Dr Andrea Despot has been Chief Executive Officer of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ) since June 1, 2020. As a political scientist with a doctorate in Eastern European history, she is an expert on the region’s society and history as well as on historical political education, the culture(s) of remembrance in Europe, and their contribution to European integration.
Before taking up her position at the EVZ Foundation, Dr. Despot served as the Director and Managing Member of the Board of the European Academy Berlin and oversaw the educational institution’s portfolio of projects and activities and its strategic management (2017–2020). Since 2008/09, she has been responsible for designing and developing educational offerings on European politics and history, capacity-building programs, and transnational encounters formats as Deputy Director/Head of Studies.
Dr Dominika Uczkiewicz
Dominika Uczkiewicz is a lawyer and historian, her research interests lie in the field of Transitional Justice, legal history and German-Polish relations with a particular focus on the history of international criminal law and the war crimes trials after the Second World War. During her PhD studies, she was working as a researcher at the Willy Brandt Centre for German and European Studies at the University of Wrocław. Currently, she is working as an assistant professor at the Centre for Totalitarian Studies at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw.
Her recent publications include a monograph on the war crimes policy of the Polish government in exile in London (Problem odpowiedzialności karnej za zbrodnie wojenne w pracach rządu polskiego na emigracji 1939-1945, Warszawa 2022), a volume edited together with Wolfgang Form: Polish and German Perspectives on Transitional Justice. World War Two and its Aftermath (Wrocław 2021) and a volume edited in cooperation with Patrycja Grzebyk: The Russian-Ukrainian War. Challenges to the Documentation and to the Prosecution of International Crimes (forthcoming).
Dr Carlo Gentile
Italian historian Dr Carlo Gentile has been working as a Research Associate at the Martin Buber Institute for Judaism, University of Cologne since 2005. He is also a well-known expert in the field of historical justice. From 1997 to 2009, Dr. Gentile served as a historical advisor for several law enforcement agencies and testified as a historical expert at war crimes trials in Italy, Germany, and Canada.
Dr. Gentile is a member of the German-Italian Historical Commission, and in 2021 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit by Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier for his services to the German-Italian Culture of Remembrance (deutsch-italienische Erinnerungskultur).
Anne Webber
Anne Webber CBE is Co-Chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, a non-profit representative body which negotiates restitution policies and procedures, conducts research, and acts for families and institutions to identify, locate and recover their Nazi-looted cultural property.
She is also Director of the Central Registry of Looted Cultural Property 1933-1945 at www.lootedart.com, an online repository of news, information, publications and research from 49 countries and a database of 25,000 objects.
Both organisations promote access to records, the identification of the looted cultural property and the tracing of its rightful owners.
Keith Lowe
Keith Lowe is a British writer. He wrote several major historical books such as Inferno, Savage Continent and The Fear and the Freedom, all of which dealt with the Second World War and its aftermath. His latest book, Prisoners of History, examines our monuments to the war and asks what they are really saying about our history and ourselves. Lowe regularly speaks on TV and radio, and he often lectures on postwar history at venues across Europe and North America. He has written for a variety of newspapers and journals, including the Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Mala Tribich MBE
Mala was born in 1930 in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland to a Jewish family. With the outbreak of World War II and the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, Mala and her family faced the harsh reality of life in the ghetto. Throughout her childhood, Mala suffered enormous adversity, including separation from her family, the loss of her mother, sister, and father in the Holocaust, and deportation to Ravensbrück concentration camp.
Following the war, Mala was reunited with her brother in England. There, she found work, studied sociology at the University of London, and still lives with her family today.
Read her story here.
Sharon Buenos
Sharon Buenos serves as the Global Director of Zikaron BaSalon, an organisation dedicated to Holocaust education and preserving survivors’ testimonies. With a rich background in public service spanning nearly two decades, Sharon has held key roles in various ministries and NGOs, including the Defense Ministry’s Procurement Mission to the U.S. and the Marketing Director position at the OR Movement. Her experience also includes representing the Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption in London. As the third generation of Holocaust survivors, Sharon’s commitment to Holocaust education is deeply personal, and she tirelessly works to ensure that the testimonies of survivors resonate across generations.
LRE Forum Co-Organisers
Institutional partners
The LRE Foundation has been supported by the National Fund for Peace, Freedom and Veteran Care (vfonds) in the Netherlands since 2012. The vfonds is a strategic partner of the Foundation since, for many projects.
The LRE Conference 2024 is part of a series of initiatives organised under the umbrella youth project ” Persecution Through their Eyes” funded by the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values programme of the European Union.
