Strassler Center for Holocaust Tel: (508) 793-8897

Dwork, April, 2014

DEBÓRAH DWORK

(current to January 2014)

Strassler Center for Holocaust Tel: (508) 793-8897

and Genocide StudiesFax: (508) 793-8827

Clark UniversityEmail:

950 Main Street

Worcester, MA 01610-1477

EDUCATION

1984Ph.D. University College, London

1978M.P.H. Yale University

1975B.A. Princeton University

EMPLOYMENT

1996-Director

Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Rose Professor of Holocaust History

Professor of History

Clark University

1991-1996Associate Professor

Child Study Center, Yale University

1989-1991Visiting Assistant Professor

Child Study Center, Yale University

1987-1989Assistant Professor

Department of Public Health Policy, School of Public Health

University of Michigan

1984-1987Visiting Assistant Professor

Dept. of History, University of Michigan (1984-86)

Dept. of Public Health Policy (1986-87)

1984Post-Doctoral Fellow

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

GRANTS AND AWARDS

2009-11Grant, Shillman Foundation

2007-08Grant, Shillman Foundation

2003-05Grant, Tapper Charitable Foundation

1993-96Grant, Anonymous Donor (Yale University administered)

1994Grant, New Land Foundation

1993-94Fellow, Guggenheim Foundation

1992-94Grant, Lustman Fund

6-8/1992Grant, National Endowment for the Humanities

1991-1992Grant, Lustman Fund

1-9/1989Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

1-6/1988Fellow, American Council of Learned Societies

1988Grant, Rackham Faculty Grant for Research (Univ. of Michigan)

6-9/1987Grant, American Philosophical Society

6-9/1985Fellow, Wellcome Trust

1984Fellow, Smithsonian Institution

1979-1983Fellow, Wellcome Trust

PUBLICATIONS

Books

A Boy in Terezín: The Private Diary of Pavel Weiner, Introduction and annotations. (Evanston, IL.: Northwestern University Press, 2011).

Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933-1946, Co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt

(N.Y.: Norton, 2009). Calmann-Lévy, Mémorial de la Shoah series [French edition], 2012; Grand Livre du Mois selection. Uitgeverij Elmar [Dutch edition], 2012. Chosen selection by History Book Club, Military Book Club, Book of the Month Club, 2. ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award Finalist.

The Terezín Album of Mariánka Zadikow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008)

An annotated, edited, facsimile edition, with historical introduction.

Holocaust: A History, Co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt (N.Y.: Norton, 2002); London: John Murray [British edition], 2003; Uitgeverij Boom [Dutch], 2003; Imago Editora [Portuguese edition], 2004; EDAF [Spanish edition], 2004. Recorded for the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D) in 2005. Holocaust was chosen by Publisher’s Weekly for its Non-fiction Best Books List for 2002. Chosen selection by the History Book Club and Traditions Book Club; Finalist, National Jewish Book Award.

Voices and Views: A History of the Holocaust, an edited, annotated, and illustrated collection, with introductions, is a scholarly project undertaken for public service. (N.Y.: Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, 2002). It serves as the cornerstone text for the JFR’s national Holocaust Education program and has been adopted by a number of education programs throughout the country. Distributed: University of Wisconsin Press.

Auschwitz, 1270 to the Present, Co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996 and revised and updated edition 2008; London: Yale University Press [British edition], 1996; Uitgeverij Boom [Dutch], 1997; Pendo [German], 1998; Argo [Czech], revised, expanded edition, 2006; Warsaw: Swiat Ksiazki [Polish], 2011). The Dutch edition was supported by the Prins Bernhard Fonds in recognition of its “major contribution to Dutch culture.” The German edition was voted the number 1 title on the (German) National Book Critics list for November, 1998 and Newsweek (August 2009) voted it one of the Ten Best Books About Poland during World War II.

Emmy-award nominee documentary based on this work, “Auschwitz: The Blueprints of Genocide,” produced by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and aired both in Britain and in the US as "Nazi Designers of Death" on the “Nova” program.

Central source for BBC seven-part series, “Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State,” directed by Laurence Rees.

Recipient of the National Jewish Book Award and the Society of Architectural Historians’ Spiro Kostoff Award.

Children With A Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991); Beck Verlag [German], 1994; Marsilio Editori [Italian], 1994; Uitgeverij Boom [Dutch], 1998; Sogen Sha [Japanese], 1999). Finalist, National Jewish Book Award. Recorded as a cassette book by the Library of Congress for the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.

Documentary based on this work and called "Children With A Star" produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC). Central source for two television network after school special programs for children on the Holocaust. Excerpt from German edition included in a national school curriculum for high school education on the Holocaust. Excerpt included in 2001 Holocaust Remembrance Project Teacher's Resource Guide web site.

War is Good for Babies and Other Young Children: A History of the Infant and Child Welfare Movement in England, 1898-1918 (London: Tavistock, and New York: Methuan, 1987).

Book Chapters, Articles, and Short Monographs

“To Work with the History of the Holocaust,” in Ivana Macek, ed., Engaging Violence: Trauma, Memory, and Representation (Routledge, 2014).

“Raising their Voices: Children’s Resistance through Diary Writing and Song,” in Patrick Henry, ed., Jewish Resistance to the Nazis (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 2014).

“Rescue,” in The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies, eds. Peter Hayes and John Roth (Oxford and N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2011).

“Refugee Jews and the Holocaust: Luck, Fortuitous Circumstances, and Timing,” in Jewish Perspectives on the “Forced Emigration” Period (1938/39 to 1941) until Deportation and Ghettoization, eds.Susanne Heim, Beate Meyer, Francis Nicosia, (Wallstein-Verlag, 2010).

“The Challenges of Holocaust Scholarship: A Personal Statement,” in Voices of Scholars, ed. Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs (Cracow: Jagiellonian University Center for Holocaust Studies, 2009).

Auschwitz and the Holocaust, The Hugo Valentin Lectures IV, Uppsala University

(Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2007).

“Sala’s World, 1939-1945: Sosnowiec, Schmelt’s Camps, and the Holocaust,” in

Letters to Sala (N.Y.: New York Public Library, 2006), pp. 51-77. Co-authored with

R. J. van Pelt.

“Auschwitz,” Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Ketter Publishing, 2006). Co-

authored with R. J. van Pelt.

“Foreward,” in Harry Mulisch, Criminal Case 40/61: An Eyewitness Report on the

Eichmann Trial, trans. Robert Naborn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), ix – xxiv.

“A Distant Shore: The Holocaust and Us,” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and

History, Spring 2005. Co-authored with R. J. van Pelt.

“Agents, Contexts, and Responsibilities: The Massacre at Budy,” in Catastrophe and

Meaning: Rethinking the Holocaust at the End of the 20th Century, eds. Moishe Postone and Eric Santer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 154- 69.

“Die verschlungene Strasse in Auschwitz,” (co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt), in Bruchlinien, ed. Gertrude Koch, (Köln and Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1999), 181-200.

“Custody and Care of Jewish Children in the Post-War Netherlands: Ethnic Identity and Cultural Hegemony,” in Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust III: Memory, Memorialization, Denial, ed. Peter Hayes (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999), 109-137.

“The Politics of a Strategy for Auschwitz-Birkenau,” (co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt), Cardozo Law Review, 20: 687 - 693.

“A Strategy for the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau,” (co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt), Cardozo Law Review, 20: 695 - 730.

“German Persecution and Dutch Accommodation: The Evolution of the Dutch National Consciousness of the Judeocide,” (co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt), in The World Reacts to the Holocaust, 1945-1990, ed. David Wyman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 45-77.

“Lamed-Vovniks of 20th Century Europe: Participants in Jewish Child Rescue,” in Resistance Against the Third Reich, ed. Michael Geyer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 89-118.

“Reclaiming Auschwitz,” (co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt), in Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory, ed. Geoffrey Hartman (London: Blackwell, 1993), 232-251, 295-297.

“Childhood,” in Encyclopaedia of the History of Medicine, eds. W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter, (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 1072-1091.

“Recovering the Past: A Beginning,” Dimensions (A Journal of Holocaust Studies), 6, Spring 1992, pp.18-23.

“The Milk Option: One Aspect of the Infant and Child Welfare Movement in England, 1898-1918,” Medical History, 31 (1987): 51-69.

“Robert Koch,” in Dictionary of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, ed. Roy Porter, (Milan: Ricci, 1984).

“Victorian Child Care,” Maternal and Child Health, 8 (May 1983).

“Koch and the Colonial Office: 1902-1904, The Second South African Expedition,” Zeitschrift fuer Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften Technik und Medizin, Jan. 1983, pp.67-74.

Dictionary of the History of Science, W.F. Bynum, E.J. Browne, and Roy Porter, eds., (London: Macmillan, 1981). Thirteen entries, from antibiotics to vitamins.

“Health Conditions of Immigrant Jews on the Lower East Side of New York,” Medical History, 24 (1981):1-40. Reprinted in: The American Jewish Experience, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1986), pp.102-19. Translated into Hebrew for The Jews of the United States, eds. Sarna and Lloyd Gartner (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1992), 183-238.

“Sophia Kleegman” and “Elise Strang L’Esperance,” Notable American Women (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 398-400 and 417-9.

“Biomedical Research and Infant and Maternal Health: A Chronology.” Written under contract to, and property of, the National Institutes of Health, August, 1979.

“A Method for Generating Figures for Biomedical Research Expenditure in the United States, 1900-1945.” Written under contract to, and property of, the National Institutes of Health, February, 1979.

“Biomedical Research: The Case of Tuberculosis.” Written under contract to, and property of, the National Institutes of Health, October, 1978.

“Born in Urban America, 1830-1860,” Clio Medica, 12 (1977): 227-53.

“The Child Model (Or the Model Child?) of the Late 19th Century in Urban America,” Clio Medica, 12 (1977):111-29.

CURRENT WORK

Book Projects

Saints and Liars is about Americans — Quakers, Unitarians, secular people, Jews — who traveled to Europe to aid and, step by step, engaged in rescuing people targeted by Nazi Germany and its allies. When hundreds of thousands of Europeans sought to flee to the west, these Americans went east. Who were these intrepid souls who, unlike so many of their fellow citizens, perceived possibilities for productive action where others saw none? Their history illuminates the factors that prompt engagement, and lays bare how rescue activities unfolded on the ground.

Women figured prominently in these initiatives. Philanthropy and service have long been women’s work. But this philanthropy and this service offered unimagined avenues for independent action. And the women loved it. They were committed to their missions. And, at the same time, they relished the derring-do, the independence, the freedom from social norms. The operatives accomplished a lot: they brought large sums of money into enemy territory, organized escape routes, sprang prisoners from incarceration. Exploring the experience of the Americans who undertook these initiatives and the imperiled people they helped, Saints and Liars presents the Holocaust as a transnational, transcontinental history that involved all manner of people from many points on the globe.

Dear Tante Elisabeth: An Extraordinary, Ordinary Christian during the Holocaustdraws upon a cache of over 3,000 letters written by Jewish parents to their children and from the children to their parents. Sent through Elisabeth Luz, a middle-aged, middle-class Christian lady in Stäfa, Switzerland, these letters tell much about daily life, and elucidate the complexities of communication, denial, and silence during and after the Nazi years. Dear Tante Elisabeth explores the history of this extraordinary woman’s efforts to help Jews during the war, and the lives of those with whom she had contact.

DIRECTORSHIP OF CENTER FOR HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE STUDIES

As the founding Director of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, it has been my privilege to formulate the mission for the Center and to give shape to its activities and direction. Please see the Year End Reports for 1996-97 through 2012-13 for a more complete discussion of the general areas delineated below:

Established undergraduate Concentration in Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Established doctoral program in Holocaust History and Genocide Studies, with funding

for all students, and served as Director of Graduate Studies for first ten years

Envisioned and actualized doctoral stream in Psychology of Genocide with student

funding.

Organized major international symposia and conferences on a range of topics, many of which were the first on that subject ever to be held anywhere.

First ever International Graduate Students’ Conference for Holocaust and Genocide

Studies (2009), followed by second (March 2012)

Established public lecture series

Established meaningful linkages with other national and international organizations

Established an undergraduate internship program for Clark students at Holocaust and genocide museums, memorials, and foundations

Established a Distinguished Visiting Professorship and Distinguished Visiting Scholar

program

Sought and selected an architect to renovate and enlarge the Center for Holocaust Studies

building, and worked with him to actualize the plans

Directed public relations and media communications strategy for the Center

Directed library acquisition plans for the Center

Chaired Strassler Family Chair for Holocaust History Search Committee;

Kaloosdian-Mugar Chair for Armenian Genocide Studies Search Committee;

Leffell Chair for Modern Jewish History Search Committee

Chaired Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Steering Committee

Chaired HH/GS graduate program admissions committee

Raised the funds (millions of dollars, endowed and annual) to support the above.

UNIVERSITY AND HISTORY DEPARTMENT SERVICE (OTHER)

I have been a member of Research Board since September 2005, and I have served on a number of departmental search committees, as well as the interdisciplinary search committee for the Director of the Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise.

TEACHING

I currently supervise fourteen doctoral students; one is a co-advisee with my colleague Taner Akcam, one is at the University of Hamburg; eleven of the fourteenare ABD. Nominated by my undergraduate students, I was selected for inclusion in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers thrice (1997-98; 2003-04; 2004-05).

Doctoral Dissertations Supervised (reverse chronological order):

Raz Segal, “Disintegration: Social Breakdown and Political Mass Violence in Subcarpathian Rus.’” CHGS, Clark University, 2013.

Stefan Ionescu, “Romanianization: Greed, Opportunism, Corruption, and Resistance in World War II Bucharest.” CHGS, Clark University, 2013.

Adara Goldberg, “We Were Called Greenies: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Canada.” CHGS,

Clark University, 2012.

Sarah Cushman, “The Women of Birkenau.: The Women’s Camp at Auschwitz-

Birkenau.” CHGS, Clark University, 2010.

Lotte Stone, Seeking Asylum: German Jewish Refugees in South Africa, 1933-1948.” CHGS,

Clark University, 2010.

Ilana Offenberger, “The Nazification of Vienna and the Response of the Viennese Jews.” CHGS,

Clark University, 2010.

Beth Cohen, “Case Closed”: Holocaust Survivors in America, 1946-1954.” CHGS, Clark

University, 2003.

Christine van der Zanden (Schmidt), “The Plateau of Hospitality: Jewish Refugee Life on the

Plateau Vivarais-Lignon.” CHGS, Clark University, 2003.

My course offerings include the following:

Holocaust: Action and Agency

Jewish Children in Nazi Europe

Rescue and Resistance During the Holocaust

Jewish and Gentile Life Under Occupation

Life and Death in the Cities of Nazi Occupied Europe

Refugees

The Holocaust through Diaries and Letters

My teaching activities extend beyond undergraduate and graduate students. I participate in teacher education workshops throughout the United States and, on a more sustained basis, I work with the national education program of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, including a week-long residence program in June and a three-day advanced seminar program in January. For more about this kind of teaching, please see the “Public Education/Teacher Education” section below.

INVITED SCHOLARLY TALKS AND CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

“Other Forms of ‘Fighting Back,’” West Point Military Academy, West Point, NY. 8 April 2014.

“Taking the Broad View: Refugee Jews and the Holocaust,” Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 10 December 2013.

“Flight from the Reich: Public Actions, Private Lives,” Edwin Soforenko Foundation Speaker Series at Roger Williams University, Bristol, RI., 28 April 2013.

Chair, panel on “Holocaust Survivors’ Return Home,” Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL., 1-4 November 2012.

“Helping Themselves with the Help of Others,” Keynote Address for an international symposium on Raoul Wallenberg and Attempts to Rescue Europe’s Jews, Oslo, Norway, 30 October 2012.

“The Life of a Young Boy in Terezin,” Public Lecture, Chapman University, Orange, CA., 18 October 2012.

Opening session, chair and presenter: “Can We Consider the Holocaust as a Paradigm in the Study of Mass Atrocities?” session chair, “Quantitative Research: Risk Assessments and the Possibilities of Predicting Mass Atrocities,” and session chair, “Possibilities and Obstacles in Preventing Mass Violence,” Symposium on Holocaust and Genocide. The Israel, Academy of Sciences and Humanities, The Hebrew University, The Van Leer Institute. 2-4 September 2012.

Opening roundtable: “Discussion on the Conceptual Development of Learning from the Past: Global Perspectives on Holocaust Education,” and chair of panel on “Successes and Challenges in Developing and Implementing Holocaust and Human Rights Education Programs,” Learning from the Past: Global Perspectives on Holocaust Education. Salzburg Global Seminar and U.S. Holocaust Memorial Musuem, Salzburg, Austria, 27 June-1 July 2012.

Keynote presentation: “The Challenges of Teaching the Holocaust at the University,”Telling the Story, Teaching the Core: Holocaust Education in the 21st Century, The 8th International Conference on Holocaust Education, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel, 18-21 June 2012.

“Working with the History of the Holocaust,” Trauma and Secondary Traumatization in Studies of Genocide and Massive Political Violence: An International Symposium, Hugo Valentin Centre, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, 21-23 May 2012.

Commentator, panel on “Rescue and Escape from the Holocaust,” Second International Graduate Student Conference for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University, Worcester, 29 March-1 April 2012.

Commentator, panel on “After the War: Jews and Gentiles in Immediate Post-War Europe,” Fourth International Inter-Disciplinary Conference on Beyond Camps and Forced Labour: Current International Research on Survivors of Nazi Persecution, Imperial War Museum, London, 5 January, 2012.