Remembering for the Future is a scholarly forum for the evaluation of the Holocaust in an age of genocides. Its aims are to assess the impact of new material and research, particularly in the post-Communist era; to reassess the Jewish-Christian dynamic in the light of the Holocaust and provide a unique opportunity for eye witnesses and scholars to work together; to disseminate new findings. It will seek to assess the legacy of the Holocaust and encourage the continued development of its study. "It is the present that asks questions about the past, but it is the past that sheds light on the strangeness of the present."
Message from the Directors of RFTF, 19th March 2001We are delighted to welcome you to RFTF's future projects, and would like to outline how its work will be continued, fostered and developed as a project of the Beth Shalom Holocaust Memorial Centre. It is our intention to continue in the spirit of Elisabeth Maxwell's original vision for RFTF, and we are delighted that Elisabeth has accepted the position of Honorary Chair of the project to continue to give it inspiration in this new phase of developments, set out below.
Remembering for the Future Annual Lecture
Firstly, we intend to create an annual RFTF Lecture to coincide with the Holocaust Memorial Day here in the UK on 27 January, with the inaugural lecture taking place in January 2002. This keynote lecture will be interdisciplinary and each year we will invite a scholar from a different field to present cutting-edge research in Holocaust and genocide studies. While it will take place in London, in the tradition of RFTF this will be a truly international affair. The lecture will be published each year, adding to the corpus of publications that RFTF will hopefully continue to produce. We also hope that the lecture will become associated with an annual Remembering for the Future award.
Remembering for the Future Seminars
Whilst we are all agreed that the RFTF 2000 conference in Oxford and London was a significant event in Holocaust scholarship, we are not at this stage envisaging further large-scale conferences of this kind, but rather smaller seminar-style working groups where a single topic will be discussed in greater depth by a smaller group of people. The RFTF seminar might thus become an annual event, with a small group of scholars invited to spend three or four days presenting papers and discussing one particular theme at length, resulting in an annual scholarly publication. The current thinking is that the more often such small working groups can be convened, the better, as specialised discourse over several days is what the field seems to need to drive the particularly difficult issues forward. We look forward to telling you about these as they emerge.
To support the activities that we envisage, RFTF will be inviting Honorary Fellows, Annual Fellows, a Scholars' Platform and a Board of Patrons (not financial patrons, but leading scholars) to support and engage in the ongoing endeavours of RFTF.
We feel confident that these projects will result in valuable exchanges of ideas and influential publications: a fitting continuation of the pioneering work that RFTF has achieved in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies.
As plans develop, further details will be announced.
Dr Stephen D Smith, MBE
Dr James M Smith