Doctoral Students

“Return Home: Holocaust Survivors Reestablishing Lives in Postwar Vienna.” Graduated, 2016. Published as: The Compromise of Return: Holocaust Survivors Reestablishing Lives in Postwar Vienna (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2021). Finalist, The Wiener Holocaust Library Ernst Fraenkel Prize.

Current Position: Director, Visiting Scholar Programs, Jack,  Joseph and Morton Mandel Center For Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.

“Gender and Agency: Women Rescuers and Perpetrators during the Genocide in Rwanda.” Graduated, 2016.  Published as: Gender and the Genocide in Rwanda: Women as Perpetrators and Rescuers (London: Routledge, 2018).  (Routledge’s “Studies in Gender and Security” series.) 

Current Position: Regional Director, San Diego; American Jewish Committee.

Beth Cohen, Ph.D.

Beth Cohen, Ph.D.

“Case Closed”: Holocaust Survivors in America, 1946-1954.” Graduated, 2003.  Published as: Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America (Rutgers University Press, 2007). Finalist, The Wiener Holocaust Library Ernst Fraenkel Prize.

Current Position: Lecturer, History and Jewish Studies, California State University, Northridge.

“The Women of Birkenau: The Women’s Camp at Auschwitz -Birkenau.” Graduated, 2010.

Current Position: Director, Holocaust Educational Foundation, Northwestern University, Evanston IL.

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Emily Dabney (ABD)

“Forced Labor in the Maghreb, 1940-1943.”

Current Position: Senior Administrative Assistant to the Assistant Vice President of Business and Information Technology, Advancement and Alumni Engagement, Emory University, Atlanta, GA.

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Daan de Leeuw (ABD)

Working title: “The Geography of Slave Labor: Dutch Jews and the Third Reich, 1942-1945.”

Research currently supported by a 2022 Ben and Zelda Cohen Fellowship at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Image of Tiberiu Galis, Ph.D.

Tiberiu Galis, Ph.D.

“Transitional Justice and Transition to a New Regime: Making Sense of Uncertain Times.” Graduated, 2015.

Current Position: Executive Director, Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, New York, U.S.; Oświęcim, Poland; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Kampala, Uganda; and Bucharest, Romania.

“We Were Called Greenies: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Canada.” Graduated, 2012.  Published as: Holocaust Survivors in Canada: Exclusion, Inclusion, Transformation, 1947 – 1955 (University of Manitoba Press, 2015).  Winner: Western Canada Jewish Book Award.  Holocaust Category.  Inaugural award.

Current Position: Director, Holocaust Resource Center/Council on Global Education and Citizenship, Kean University, Union, NJ.

“Writing and Rewriting the History of the Kovno Ghetto.”

Research currently (2022-2023) supported by a Claims Conference Saul Kagan Fellowship in Advanced Holocaust Studies.

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Naama Haviv (ABD)

Current Position: Director of Development and Community Relations, MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.

“Fossoli di Carpi: The History and Memory of the Holocaust in Italy.”  Graduated, 2014.   Published as: The Holocaust and Compensated Compliance in Italy: Fossoli di Carpi, 1942 – 1952 (Palgrave Macmillan Italian Studies, 2016).  

Current Position: Lecturer, University of San Francisco.

“Romanianization: Greed, Opportunism, Corruption, and Resistance in World War II Bucharest.” Graduated, 2013.  Published as: Jewish Resistance to Romanianization, 1940 – 1944 (Palgrave Macmillan Studies in the History of Genocide, 2015). 

Current Position: Theodore Zev and Alice R. Weiss-Holocaust Educational Foundation Visiting Associate Professor in Holocaust Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

Jeffrey Koerber, Ph.D.

“Born in the Borderlands: Jewish Youth and Their Response to Oppression and Genocide, 1933 – 1948.” Graduated, 2015. Published as: Borderland Generation: Soviet and Polish Jews under Hitler (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2020). Finalist, The Wiener Holocaust Library Ernst Fraenkel Prize.

Current Position: Assistant Professor of Holocaust History, Chapman University, Orange, CA.

Alexandra Kramen (ABD)

Working title: “Justice Pursued: Jewish Survivors’ Struggle for Holocaust Justice in Displaced Persons Camp Föhrenwald, 1945-1957.”

Research currently (2022-2023) supported by a Fellowship from the Center for Jewish History.

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Natalya Lazar (ABD)

“Czernowitz Jews and the Holocaust.”

Current Position: Program Director, Initiative on Ukrainian-Jewish Shared History and the Holocaust in Ukraine, at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, USHMM.

Beth Lilach (ABD)

“Aftermath of Liberation: Jewish Life in Displaced Persons Camps, Germany 1945-1957.

Current Position: Executive Director, Konar Center for Jewish Studies and Tolerance, at  Nazareth College, Rochester, NY

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Abigail Miller (ABD)

“The Transmission of Holocaust Memory in Argentina: From the Refugee Survivors to the Generation of the Disappeared.”

Current Position: Freelance Editor and Consultant Historian.

“Genocide and Humanitarian Resistance in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1917.” Graduated, 2016. Published as: The Resistance Network: The Armenian Genocide and Humanitarianism in Ottoman Syria, 1915-1918 (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2021). Awarded Honorable Mention, 2021 Syrian Studies Association.

Current Position: Armenian and Georgian Area Specialist in the African and Middle Eastern Division (Near East Section) at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.;  and Lecturer in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University; New York, NY.

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Michael Nolte (ABD)

“Hadamar, 1933-1945.”

Current Position: Learning and Performance Technologies Manager Central Europe, Sodexo, Germany.

“The Nazification of Vienna and the Response of the Viennese Jews.” Graduated 2010.  Awarded the Radomir Luza Prize.  Published as: The Jews of Nazi Vienna, 1938-1945: Rescue and Destruction (Palgrave Macmillan Studies in the History of Genocide, 2017). 

Current Position: Teaching Professor, History Department, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

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Alicja Podbielska, Ph.D.

“A Tree for Poland: The Memory of Holocaust Rescue, 1942-2018.” Graduated 2021.

Current position:

Current position: Visiting Assistant Professor of Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, GA. 

“The Plateau of Hospitality: Jewish Refugee Life on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon.” Graduated, 2003.

Current Position: Deputy Director and Head of Research, The Wiener Holocaust Library, London, England.

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Raz Segal, Ph.D.

“Disintegration: Social Breakdown and Political Mass Violence in Subcarpathian Rus.” Graduated, 2013.  Published as: Genocide in the Carpathians: War, Social Breakdown, and Mass Violence, 1914 – 1945 (Stanford University Press, 2016).

Current Position: Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide. Director, Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies program, Stockton University, Galloway, NJ.

“Concealed Presence: Jewish Children in Nazi-Occupied Kraków.” Graduated, 2016. Published as Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust (Rutgers University Press, 2021). Awarded The Wiener Holocaust Library Ernst Fraenkel Prize.

Current Position: Historian and Fellowship Administrator, The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), New York, NY.

Image of Lotta Stone, Ph.D.

Lotta Stone, Ph.D.

“Seeking Asylum: Jewish Refugees to South Africa 1930-1948.” Graduated, 2010.

Current Position: Historian and Research Associate, The Middleton Place Foundation, Charleston, SC.