Events

The Leo Baeck Institute London would like to invite you to another free online screening from the LBI Film Club, starting on Friday 19 September 2025. We hope all the film lovers among you will continue to enjoy our selection of thought-provoking films exploring the rich, diverse and multi-faceted Jewish experience. This latest offering is gentle, sometimes tragic, and deeply moving. 

On a train to Auschwitz, 15-year-old Eva made a promise to her older brother Heinz: if he did not…

Due to the horrors of the Third Reich, we have come to think of German nationalism as inherently antisemitic, racist, antidemocratic, and violent. This talk challenges this conventional interpretation. It shows how the defenders of the Weimar and First Austrian Republics used the großdeutsch idea, the notion that Austria should be part of a German nation-state, to create a democratic nationalism. Unlike their conservative and right-wing opponents, these republicans did not view democracy and Germany, socialism and nationalism, or Jew and German as mutually…

Writing on the Wall: The Unfolding Persecution of Jews 1933 to 1939

Join us for a compelling lecture which explores the responses of Jews to incidents of persecution and humiliation under Nazi rule, from Hitler coming to power in 1933 through to the outbreak of the Second World War. It will argue that, while the Holocaust could not have been predicted, the level of persecution escalated during the period.

Professor Frank McDonough is an internationally renowned expert on the Third Reich. He was born in Liverpool, studied history at…

Join us for the inaugural Eva Reichmann Lecture: 

Eva Reichmann: Witness, Historian, Legacy

This special event celebrates the legacy of Dr. Eva Reichmann, a pioneering historian whose groundbreaking work continues to shape our understanding of Nazi persecution and Holocaust historiography.

Welcome & Introduction 

Dr. Joseph Cronin (Director, Leo Baeck Institute London) and Dr. Toby Simpson (Director, The Wiener Holocaust Library) will open the evening by reflecting on Eva Reichmann’s…

In the early twentieth century, German-Jewish thinkers converged upon Daoism as a means to criticise state power and the dominance of economic productivity in modern society. Figures like Moses Mendelssohn, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin explored how Daoist ideas could inspire alternative ways of organising social and economic life, thereby challenging stereotypes of ‘China’ as passive or non-productive. This talk examines how their engagement with Daoism offered a vision of religion’s role in everyday life that moved beyond racialised notions of activity and inactivity, and the…

Eighth international multidisciplinary conference, to be held at Birkbeck, University of London, and The Wiener Holocaust Library, London, 7-9 January 2026

A call for papers is now open for this conference: https://www.leobaeck.co.uk/news/2024/11/call-papers-beyond-camps-and-forced-labour-current-international-research-survivors

The conference will be held in-person only, with no opportunity to attend virtually.