About

Portrait of Debórah Dwork

Debórah Dwork is the Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center — CUNY. Internationally renowned for her scholarship on Holocaust history, she is also a leading authority on university education in this field. As the inaugural Rose Professor of Holocaust History and Founding Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, she changed the academic landscape, envisioning and actualizing doctoral training in Holocaust History and Genocide Studies.

One of the first historians to record Holocaust survivors' oral histories and to use their narratives as a scholarly source, Dwork explores the social and cultural history of the Holocaust. Her books include the now classic Children With A Star, translated into many languages and the subject of a CBC documentary. Recognizing that history focused on the adult world and that children were seen as future participants in that realm, Dwork imagined a new "child-centered" approach — a wholly original theoretical development that opened a fresh area of historical investigation.

Auschwitz, co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt, received the National Jewish Book Award and the Spiro Kostoff Award and was selected by Newsweek as one of the Ten Best Books about Poland during World War II. Holocaust: A History, again with van Pelt, was a National Jewish Book Award Finalist — the first work to marry the history of World War II and the history of the Holocaust, intertwining the history of the perpetrators and that of the victims.

Flight from the Reich: Jewish Refugees, 1933–1946 opened the geographic view of the Holocaust, integrated the refugee experience, and extended the temporal frame to the postwar years. Dwork pays particular attention to victims' primary documents; her Terezin Album of Mariánka Zadikow and A Boy in Terezín: The Private Diary of Pavel Weiner exemplify that commitment.

Dwork's newest work, Saints and Liars (W.W. Norton, 2025), is about Americans — Quakers, Unitarians, Jews — who traveled to Europe to aid and, step by step, turned to rescuing people targeted by Nazi Germany and other racist states. She has now embarked upon Dear Tante Elisabeth: An Extraordinary, Ordinary Christian during the Holocaust, drawing upon a cache of over 1,000 letters sent through a middle-class Christian woman in Stäfa, Switzerland. Above all, Professor Dwork is a teacher and mentor, committed to training the next generation of Holocaust scholars.

✦

Honors & Fellowships

Distinguished Achievement Award — Holocaust Educational Foundation (2024) Annetje Fels-Kupferschmidt Award — Dutch Auschwitz Committee (2022) Lifetime Achievement Award — International Network of Genocide Scholars (2020) Senior Scholar-in-Residence — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Guggenheim Fellow Woodrow Wilson International Center Fellow ACLS Fellow

✦

Curriculum Vitae

Download CV (PDF)
Current Position

Director

Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY — 2021–present
Previous Positions

Rose Professor of Holocaust History (Inaugural)

Clark University, Worcester, MA

Founding Director

Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University Envisioned and actualized the first doctoral program in the world specifically in Holocaust History and Genocide Studies
Books
  • Dwork, Debórah. Saints and Liars: The Story of Americans Who Saved Refugees from the Nazis. New York: W.W. Norton, 2025. Library Journal Stellar Book for 2025; National Jewish Book Award Finalist.
  • Weiner, Pavel; Dwork, Debórah, ed. A Boy in Terezin: The Private Diary of Pavel Weiner, April 1944–April 1945. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2012.
  • Dwork, Debórah; van Pelt, Robert Jan. Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933–1946. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award Finalist. Translations: Dutch, French.
  • Dwork, Debórah. The Terezín Album of Mariánka Zadikow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
  • Dwork, Debórah; van Pelt, Robert Jan. Auschwitz (revised ed.). New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. First edition: Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, 1996. National Jewish Book Award; Spiro Kostoff Award. Selected by Newsweek as one of Ten Best Books about Poland during World War II. Translations: Czech, Dutch, German, Polish. Subject of BBC documentary.
  • Dwork, Debórah; van Pelt, Robert Jan. Holocaust: A History. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002. National Jewish Book Award Finalist. Translations: Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish.
  • Dwork, Debórah, ed. Voices and Views: A History of the Holocaust. New York: Jewish Foundation for the Righteous / University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
  • Dwork, Debórah. Children With A Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. National Jewish Book Award Finalist. Translations: Dutch, German, Italian, Japanese. Subject of CBC documentary.
  • Dwork, Debórah. War Is Good for Babies and Other Young Children: A History of the Infant and Child Welfare Movement in England, 1898–1918. London; New York: Tavistock Publications, 1987.
Selected Chapters & Essays
  • "Jewish Life and Death under Nazi Rule across Europe and around the Globe." In The Cambridge World History of Genocide, vol. III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
  • "Sexual Abuse, Sexual Barter, and Silence." Buried Words (special issue, Holocaust Studies). 2021.
  • "Holocaust Studies: A Compass." In Advancing Holocaust Studies, eds. Rittner and Roth. Routledge, 2020.
  • "Flight and Exile." In A Companion to Nazi Germany, eds. Baranowski et al. Wiley, 2018.
  • "Rescue." In The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies, eds. Hayes and Roth. Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • "Refugee Jews and the Holocaust: Luck, Fortuitous Circumstances, and Timing." In Jewish Perspectives on the 'Forced Emigration' Period. Wallstein-Verlag, 2010.
  • "Agents, Contexts, and Responsibilities: The Massacre at Budy." In Catastrophe and Meaning, eds. Postone and Santer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
  • "Lamed-Vovniks of 20th Century Europe: Participants in Jewish Child Rescue." In Resistance Against the Third Reich, ed. Geyer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
  • View full list of selected chapters →
Awards & Fellowships
  • Distinguished Achievement Award, Holocaust Educational Foundation (2024)
  • Annetje Fels-Kupferschmidt Award, Dutch Auschwitz Committee (2022)
  • Lifetime Achievement Award, International Network of Genocide Scholars (2020)
  • Senior Scholar-in-Residence, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  • Guggenheim Fellow
  • Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
  • ACLS Fellow
Documentary Films
  • "The U.S. and the Holocaust," dir. Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, Sarah Botstein (PBS, 2022)
  • "Misha and the Wolves," dir. Sam Hobkinson (Sundance, 2021)
  • "Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War," dir. Ken Burns and Artemis Joukowsky (PBS, 2016)
  • "Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State," KCET/BBC (2005)
  • "Unlikely Heroes," Moriah Films, dir. Rich Trank (2003)
  • "Children With A Star," CBC (1991)
  • View complete filmography →
Professional Service

Scholar Advisor

The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme, Education Outreach Section, Department of Global Communications, United Nations, New York, NY 2019–present

Ernst Fraenkel Book Prize Jury (Member)

The Wiener Holocaust Library, London 2017–present

Member, U.S. Delegation

International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) 2011–2021 · Chair, Academic Working Group (2019–2020)
Museum & Exhibition Advisory
  • Co-Author and Scholar Advisor, "After the End of the World: Displaced Persons and Displaced Persons Camps," UN/YIVO exhibition (2022–2023; traveled to Vienna, Shanghai, Maitland FL)
  • Scholar Advisor for Holocaust period, "Shared History: 1700 Years of Jewish Life in German-speaking Lands," Leo Baeck Institute (2021)
  • Scholar Advisor, "A Journey to Life," Center for Holocaust, Human Rights, and Genocide Education, Brookdale Community College
  • Guest Curator, "Signs of Life," Sydney Jewish Museum (2014–2016)
  • Scholar Advisor, Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York — Against the Odds (2013); The Place They Called Auschwitz (2013–2014)
Advisory Boards (Current)
  • Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities
  • Facing History and Ourselves
  • International Research Institute on Jewish Women, Brandeis University
  • Jewish Foundation for the Righteous
  • Leo Baeck Institute
Doctoral Mentoring

Dwork envisioned and actualized the first doctoral program in the world specifically in Holocaust History and Genocide Studies. She has trained scholars now holding positions at, inter alia the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Holocaust Educational Foundation at Northwestern University, the Library of Congress, Chapman University, Claims Conference, the Wiener Holocaust Library (London), and other institutions across North America and Europe.

View doctoral students →

Contact

ddwork@gc.cuny.edu

Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity
CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016