Staying Alive in Hitler’s Berlin

by

Lecture Global/Intercultural

Thu, Oct 29, 2026

4:30 PM – 6 PM EDT (GMT-4)

Louis A. Simpson International Building, Room A71

Princeton, NJ 08544, United States

Details

Hitler never trusted Berliners, and many Berliners never trusted him. Berlin was the cosmopolitan metropolis which the Nazis liked to hate. Too many free spirits, too many sexual deviants, and too many Jews. When the Third Reich was finally defeated in May 1945, the city was in ruins.

Bleiben Sie übrig, ‘stay alive’, is how Berliners said goodbye to each once British and American bombers attacked the city day and night. By that stage, in 1943, most Jews of Berlin had already been deported to the death camps.

If my book about daily life in Hitler’s capital during the war has a running theme, it is a question that sadly is still with us: how to remain decent in an indecent society. In Nazi Germany common decency came with an increasingly high price.

Speakers

Ian Buruma's profile photo

Ian Buruma

Bard College

Studies in Chinese literature and history at Leyden University; graduate studies in Japanese cinema at Nihon University, Tokyo. Documentary filmmaker and photographer in Tokyo (1977–80); cultural editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, Hong Kong (1983–86); foreign editor of The Spectator, London (1990–91). Fellowships: Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin (1991–92); Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C. (1998–99); Alistair Horne Visiting Fellow, St. Antony’s College, Oxford (1999–2000). Regular contributor to New York Review of Books, New York Times Magazine, New Republic, New Yorker, and The Guardian. Books include Behind the Mask (1983); God’s Dust (1988); Playing the Game (1990); The Wages of Guilt (1995); The Missionary and the Libertine (1997); Anglomania: A European Love Affair (1999); Bad Elements (2001); Inventing Japan: 1853–1964 (2003); Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (2006). Coauthor, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (2004). At Bard since 2003.

Hosted By

Program in Contemporary European Politics and Society | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Program in Contemporary European Politics and Society (OWNER)