“In this gripping graphic novel, a Jewish journalist encounters an extension of the horrors of the Holocaust in North Africa. Through bold, historically inflected illustrations that convey the tension of the coming war and the grimness of the Vichy camps, Aomar Boum and Nadjib Berber capture the experiences of thousands of refugees through the fictional Hans, chronicling how the traumas of the Holocaust extended far beyond the borders of Europe.” – Stanford University Press
Join us on September 9th at 7 pm for a book talk with Aomar Boum co-author of the graphic novel, Undesirables: A Holocaust Journey to North Africa. Boum will be in conversation with Christopher Silver, the Segal Family Associate Professor in Jewish History and Culture in the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University.
The conversation will touch on the lesser-known history of the Holocaust in North Africa.
This is a hybrid event, in-person tickets are $10 and online tickets are pay-what-you-can.
This event is being run in partnership with the Toronto Holocaust Museum and the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.
Learn more about our speakers
- A historical anthropologist and Resident Member of the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco, Aomar Boum is Professor and Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies in the Department of Anthropology, Department of History and Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. Boum is also Faculty Fellow at the Université Internationale de Rabat, Morocco. Boum is the co-founder of the Amazigh Studies initiative at UCLA, and co-founder, co-director of the Moroccan Jewish Studies Initiative at UCLA. A native of a Saharan community in southeastern Morocco, Boum has interdisciplinary training in anthropology, history, Islamic studies, Judaic Studies and Middle Eastern and North African studies.
- Christopher Silver is the Segal Family Associate Professor in Jewish History and Culture in the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University. His first book Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music Across Twentieth Century North Africa was published in 2022 with Stanford University Press and was the winner of the 2023 L. Carl Brown AIMS Book Prize in North African Studies. He is the author of numerous, prize-winning articles on Jewish and North African history, the Jewish-Muslim relationship, and music, including in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Jewish Social Studies, and Hespéris-Tamuda. He is also the founder and curator of the website Gharamophone.com, a digital archive of North African records from the first half of the twentieth century.
