Monday, April 03, 2000

WILMINGTON- Widely acclaimed author and professor of history at UNC-CH, Dr. Christopher Browning, will lecture on "Ethnic Cleansing Prelude to Genocide," at 7:30 p.m., Wed., April 12, at UNCW's Cameron Hall, Room 105.

Browning will discuss the evolution of Nazi Jewish policy in eastern Europe between 1939-41. According to Browning, before the systematic mass murder of European Jews, the Nazi regime contemplated and attempted three successive plans for "ethnic cleansing" of Jews by expelling them out of German-occupied Europe.

Browning, author of five books, received the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category in 1993 for his Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.

"Ordinary Men is one of the most important works on the destruction of European Jews," said Dr. Michael Seidman, UNC Wilmington professor of history. Ordinary Men has been translated into German, French, Italian, Dutch, and Swedish.

Browning received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1967 and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1968 and 1975 respectively. After teaching for 25 years at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, he took his current position as the Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Professor Browning has received fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the Fulbright Commission. In 1996, he was the senior scholar in residence at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The free lecture is sponsored by the UNC Wilmington Department of History and is open to the public. For more information contact Dr. Michael Seidman at 910-962-3319.