What is the nature of proof, and how is it obfuscated by memory and time? Faced with indescribable monstrosities, what level of justice can a court trial achieve? In the aftermath of a totalitarian regime, what remains of national memory? In Linda Kinstler’s rich and probing work Come to This Court and Cry, family and international history intertwine in an investigation a Latvian Nazi killing squad. The granddaughter of a member of this group, Kinstler uncovers decades of revisionist practices which rehabilitated its figurehead and rewrote historical reality. From legal cases to cultural narratives and evolving national identities, Kinstler demonstrates the world’s failure to reckon with the Holocaust and its enduring, haunting presence today. Kinstler will be in conversation with journalist Madeleine Schwartz.
About the speakers:
Linda Kinstler is the author of Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends (Le Contraire De L’Oubli, Denoël, January 2023). She is the deputy editor of The Dial magazine and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Economist, and other publications. She is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric at U.C. Berkeley, where she is writing a history of legal oblivion. Kinstler is Deputy Editor of The Dial.
Madeleine Schwartz is a journalist and editor based in Paris whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books. Schwartz is Editor-in-Chief of The Dial.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Kinstler and Schwartz will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
