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About Us / Fellowships and Grants

Awarded Fellows

2023

Dr. Maria Mădălina Irimia, a researcher at The Center for the Study of Jewish History in Romania, is the recipient of the Max and Cecil (Steuer) Chesin / JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Irimia will examine Wilhelm Filderman’s work as the president of the JDC in Romania (1920-1947).

Dr. Yurii Kaparulin, a research scholar at the University of Michigan, is the recipient of the Sorrell and Lorraine Chesin / JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Kaparulin will explore the social history of the Jewish agrarian settlements in the Southern Ukraine (1924-1947).

Julie Dawson, a doctoral candidate at the University of Vienna, is a recipient of the Fred and Ellen Lewis / JDC Archives Fellowship. Ms. Dawson’s project seeks, with the assistance of the JDC Archives, to illuminate the experience of Jewish survivors in Romania in the late 1940s and 1950s.

Dr. Sarah Zarrow, an Associate Professor of History at Western Washington University, is a recipient of the Fred and Ellen Lewis / JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Zarrow will investigate JDC Support for Cecylja Klaftenowa’s workshop and school in interwar Lwów, Poland.

Dr. Anna-Carolin Augustin, a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in DC, is the recipient of the Ruth and David Musher / JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Augustin will examine the post-WWII ‘afterlives’ of European Jewish ceremonial objects in Germany, the US, and Israel. Her project aims to trace the translocations, re-framings, and impacts of Jewish cultural assets, as well as the persons and organizations associated with them.

Julia Schulte-Werning, a doctoral candidate at the University of Vienna, is the recipient of the Bernard and Mollie Steuer / JDC Archives Fellowship. Ms. Schulte-Werning’s project focuses on the medical-humanitarian activities of the Jewish health care organization Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) in Morocco from the 1940s to the 1960s.

2022

Ethell Gershengorin, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is the recipient of the Max and Cecil (Steuer) Chesin/JDC Archives Fellowship. Ms. Gershengorin will examine Jewish pogrom aid and its role in Bolshevik state building, 1917-1924.

Dr. Michael Rom, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, is the recipient of the Nathan and Sarah Chesin/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Rom will conduct research on Egyptian Jewish emigration to Brazil between 1956 and 1961.

Dr. Robin Buller, a postdoctoral fellow at the Pacific Office of the German Historical Institute Washington and a visiting scholar at University of California Berkeley, is the recipient of the Sorrell and Lorraine Chesin/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Buller will research the rescue of Ottoman and post-Ottoman (Greek, Turkish, and Bulgarian-born) Sephardi Jews from occupied France during the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Dr. Danielle Battisti of the University of Nebraska is the recipient of the Fred and Ellen Lewis/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Battisti will investigate the origins and functions of the Intergovernmental Committee on European Migration (ICEM).

Dr. Rebecca Kobrin of Columbia University is the recipient of the Fred and Ellen Lewis/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Kobrin’s project uses a close examination of several representatives of the JDC in the Far East to ask larger questions about the role NGOs played in American diplomacy in this region.

Dr. Yair Wallach of SOAS, University of London, is the recipient of the Ruth and David Musher/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Wallach will research Ashkenazi migrants and refugees in Egypt and Lebanon, and their relations with local society—with Sephardic Jews, as well as Muslims and Christians.

Walter Francis, a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota, is the recipient of the Ruth and David Musher/JDC Archives Regional Fellowship. Mr. Francis will examine efforts by Tunisian Jews before the Six-Day War to rebuild their community and retain their ties to Tunisia as a homeland, while simultaneously building connections to the wider Jewish world.

2021

Dr. Lorena Cardona Gonzalez of the Universidad de Caldas in Colombia is the recipient of the Max and Cecil (Steuer) Chesin/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Cardona Gonzalez will examine the integration of Jewish refugees from Nazism in Colombia during the postwar period.

Dr. Corinna Guttstadt, Managing Director of the Türkei Europa Zentrum at Hamburg University in Germany, is the recipient of the Sorrell and Lorraine Chesin/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Guttstadt will examine the importance of Istanbul as a hub for rescue efforts during the Shoah—and the pivotal role of the JDC.

Dr. Melissa Klapper of Rowan University is the recipient of the Fred and Ellen Lewis/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Klapper will explore the complex ways that Jewish identity figured into the travel experiences of American Jewish women between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War II.

Jonathan Zisook, a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Center—City University of New York (CUNY), is the recipient of the Fred and Ellen Lewis / JDC Archives Fellowship. Mr. Zisook will investigate the social, political, and religious history of Jewish life in Poland between 1968 and 1989.

Joshua Tapper, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, is the recipient of the Ruth and David Musher/JDC Archives Fellowship. Mr. Tapper will trace the revival of Jewish institutional and political life, cultural organization, and a multi-denominational religious sphere in the final years of the Soviet Union (1985–1991).

Dr. Sandra Gruner-Domic, independent researcher at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, is the recipient of the Bernard and Mollie Steuer/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Gruner-Domic’s research will focus on the immigration of European Jews to Bolivia during and after the war.

2020

Sylvia Hershcovitz, a doctoral student at Bar-Ilan University, is the recipient of the Fred and Ellen Lewis/JDC Archives Fellowship. Ms. Hershcovitz will conduct research on Jewish women and their organizations in Romania during the first half of the twentieth century.

Alexandra Kramen, a doctoral student at Clark University, was awarded the Fred and Ellen Lewis/JDC Archives Fellowship. Ms. Kramen will investigate how displaced persons living in the Föhrenwald DP camp in postwar Europe conceived of and acted upon justice for the harms they and their loved ones suffered during the Holocaust, often defying conventional notions of justice and revenge in the process.

Dr. Dóra Pataricza, a post-doctoral researcher at Åbo Akademi University in Finland, is the recipient of the Ruth and David Musher/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Pataricza will examine the fate and everyday life of Jewish survivors of Szeged, Hungary, in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Frankee Lyons, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, is the recipient of the Nathan and Sarah Chesin/JDC Archives Fellowship. Ms. Lyons’ research in the JDC Archives will focus on the Joint’s operations in Poland during the time of migration and political change from 1957 through the mid-1960s preceding the March 1968 antisemitic campaign.

2019

Stacy Veeder, PhD, of the University of New York at Albany was awarded the Max and Cecil (Steuer) Chesin / JDC Archives Fellowship. She will use the fellowship to analyze how personal and familial aid, in particular parcels sent from family and friends, functioned as a vital supplement to famine rations in the internment camps of France during World War II and became crucial to the efforts of French and international relief groups such as JDC.

Emily Bengels, a doctoral student at Gratz College, was awarded the Sorrell and Lorraine Chesin/JDC Archives Fellowship. Ms. Bengels will investigate JDC rescue efforts of children from OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants) homes in France in the World War II era, including the funding, transportation, and housing of children once in the United States.

Michal Ben Ya’akov, PhD, of Efrata College for Education in Jerusalem is the recipient of the Fred and Ellen Lewis/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Ben Ya’akov will examine the images of North African Jews in the eyes of US Jews in the decades after World War II.

Michael Nutkiewicz, PhD, a retired scholar, was awarded the Fred and Ellen Lewis/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Nutkiewicz will conduct research on Eli (Illia) Gumener. Gumener was an activist, important in local and regional activities in Ukraine during the Civil War following the Russian Revolution. He worked on behalf of war orphans and was a representative of JDC in the Bialystok region.

Jan Láníček, PhD, of the University of New South Wales in Sidney, Australia was awarded the Ruth and David Musher/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Láníček’s research will focus on humanitarian program for the Jews organized during the Second World War by the governments-in-exile in cooperation with Jewish organizations.

Lauren Henry, a doctoral student at Ohio State University, is the recipient of the Ruth and David Musher / JDC Archives Regional Fellowship. Ms. Henry will research JDC’s work in French Algeria during and after both World War II and the Algerian War.

Sari Siegel, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, is the recipient of the Bernard and Mollie Steuer/JDC Archives Fellowship. Dr. Siegel will research the Jewish doctors who, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, treated the malnourished, the ill, and the injured Jewish displaced persons in Germany.

2018

Alina Bothe, PhD is a lecturer at the Institute for East European Studies (Freie Universität Berlin). She will use the fellowship to research the persecution of Jews with Polish citizenship in the German Reich (1938-1940).

Gaelle Fisher, PhD is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. She will conduct research on the reactions and responses of the Jewish community in Romania in the face of persecution over the ten year period 1938-1948, with a focus on the role and position of Romanian Jewish leadership.

Laura Almagor, PhD is a postdoctoral fellow in Jewish Studies at the Central European University in Budapest. She will use the fellowship to conduct research on how the issue of Jewish DPs in Austria influenced the development of migration and refugee policies, discourses, and ideology after WWII.

Rachel Blumenthal received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She will use the fellowship to research how locals and migrants in Upper Austria rebuilt their lives in the wake of WWII.

Ming Hui Pan is a Phd candidate in Judaic Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. She will conduct research on JDC’s work in China during the two World Wars, with a focus on the Jewish community in Harbin.

Danielle Willard-Kyle is a PhD candidate in the History Department at Rutgers University. Her research in the JDC Archives will focus on the questions of home-making and community building by Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe and North Africa in transitional immigration camps in Italy after the Second World War.

2017

Jacob Eder, PhD is a research fellow at the Department of History at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena. He will be researching in the JDC Archives for his new book about transnational Jewish humanitarianism: American Jewish Relief Organizations and Global Jewish Politics.

Joseph Benatov, PhD earned his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. Originally from Bulgaria, Dr. Benatov has studied and published articles on the fate of Bulgarian Jewry during World War II. His fellowship research topic is JDC activities in Bulgaria in the postwar period, 1945-1949, and its support of the Jewish community and involvement in the mass immigration of the Bulgarian Jewish community to Israel.

Naida Michal Brandl, PhD is a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the Chair of Judaic Studies, Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb in Croatia. Her doctoral thesis titled “Jews in Croatia from 1944-45 until 1952” was on the subject of Jewish survivors under the early Yugoslav Communist rule and the Aliyah of much of the community. Her research in the JDC Archives will be on the role of JDC in the reestablishment of Jewish religious communities in Croatia (Yugoslavia) in the aftermath of the Shoah.

Denis Kozlov, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Dalhousie University. He will be conducting research in the JDC Archives for his current book project about Soviet Jewish emigration to the West during the 1970s and 1980s.

Omri Tubi is a PhD candidate in the Sociology Department at Northwestern University. His research in the JDC Archives will focus on the relationship between public health campaigns and state-formation in Mandatory Palestine. He will be studying JDC’s reconstruction activities in Palestine, public health campaigns, and health-related and medical activities. He is interested in medical sociology and the burgeoning field of global and transnational sociology.

2016

Michal Frankl, PhD served as head of the department of Jewish studies and the history of antisemitism at the Jewish Museum in Prague, Czech Republic. Frankl will use the fellowship toward his research on citizens of no man’s land and transformation of Jewish citizenship in East-Central Europe in 1935-1939 and the role of Jewish aid organizations.

Mary Cox, PhD is a departmental lecturer in social history at Oxford University, UK. Cox is working on the mapping of feeding centers in Vienna in the post-World War I period and will use the fellowship toward her research on JDC’s role in feeding Viennese civilians and the relation that the Joint had with the American Relief Administration (ARA).

Glenn Dynner, PhD is a professor of Jewish studies and chair of humanities at Sarah Lawrence College. Dynner will use the fellowship toward his research on Jewish traditionalism in Poland during the interwar and Holocaust periods.

Natan Meir, PhD is an associate professor of Judaic studies at Portland State University. Meir will use his fellowship for research that examines the “Republic of Beggars”—the Jewish destitute, disabled, and disposed of in prewar Eastern Europe.

Luca Fenoglio is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Edinburg, UK. Fenoglio will use the fellowship toward his research on the rescue activities of the Jewish Comite d’Aide aux Refugies in Nice and Jewish self-help in Axis-occupied France.

2015

Andrew J. Falk, PhD, is an associate professor of history at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. He is using the fellowship for research that examines how American NGO’s and private citizens served as proxies for the US government to provide humanitarian assistance to refugees before and during World War II.

Rachel Blumenthal is a PhD candidate in Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Blumenthal will use the fellowship toward her research on the role of JDC in the activities of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany in the first decade after its establishment.

Anna Manchin received a PhD in modern European history from Brown University in 2008. Her dissertation topic was Fables of Modernity: Entertainment Films and the Social Imaginary in Interwar Hungary. She will use the fellowship to research how Hungary’s Jewish community readjusted to life in Hungary in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

2014

Sara Silverstein is a PhD candidate in modern European and international history at Yale University, with an expected graduation date of May 2015. Silverstein will use the fellowship toward her research on the way Jewish Eastern European doctors in the mid-twentieth century shaped national and international health services, as well as the understanding of social and human rights in the post-Holocaust period.

Gerald Steinacher, PhD is an associate professor of history and the Hymen Rosenberg Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Steinacher will use the fellowship toward his research on the interactions between Jewish relief organizations and the Red Cross in assisting Holocaust survivors and refugees after 1945.

2013

Pamela Joy Shatzkes is a London-based scholar who received her PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author of Holocaust and Rescue: Impotent or Indifferent Anglo Jewry 1938-1945, published by Palgrave Macmillan. Shatzkes used the Fellowship for research on the retrieval of Jewish war orphans who survived the Holocaust in the care of Christian families, monasteries, and convents.

Lior Sternfeld is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Texas at Austin. Sternfeld used the Fellowship toward his research on the Jewish community in Iran under the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1941-1979).

2012

Mary Fraser Kirsh, who holds a PhD in the field of Modern European History, used the fellowship to research the mental health and development of child survivors of World War II from the perspective of the caregivers.

Susan Gilson Miller, PhD, a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, is a leading scholar in Moroccan history. Miller used the Fellowship toward her work on the Holocaust in North Africa, with a focus on rescue operations across Morocco and Western Algeria during the 1940s.