Where are the stories of great queer love in the Holocaust? There are almost none. Anna Hájková, author of People without History are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust (2025), explains why the history of same-sex desire in the Shoah, that is, queerness among Jews persecuted by the Nazis for their race, has been excluded and marginalized, and how its return to our understanding of the Holocaust can offer an inclusive and feminist history of this genocide. Based on original and extensive archival research, Dr. Hájková's book offers groundbreaking insight into the queer history of the Holocaust.

Dr. Hájková, Reader of Modern European Continental History at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, will introduce her book – winner of a National Jewish Book Award – in conversation with Benjamin Carter Hett, Professor of History, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Content Advisory: This book talk includes sensitive material related to sexual violence, which may be distressing. Attendee discretion is advised.

People without History are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust will be available for purchase and signing after the program.

About the Speakers
Anna Hájková is Reader of Modern European Continental History at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. She currently serves the University as Director of the European History Research Centre, and from 2021-2025, served as Co-Director of the Warwick Centre for Global Jewish Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in Modern European History from the University of Toronto. Dr. Hájková is the author of, among other books, The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt (2020) and People without History are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust (2025). She is the pioneer of queer Holocaust history.

Benjamin Carter Hett earned a J.D. at the University of Toronto and practiced litigation in Toronto before earning a Ph.D. in history at Harvard University. Since 2003, he has taught at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Dr. Hett has authored six books including The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic (2018), winner of the 2019 Vine Award for History and named one of the year’s best books by The Times of London and the Daily Telegraph; and The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War (2020), named an editors’ choice by the New York Times Book Review.