Naida Michal Brandl Lectures on Jewish Life in Croatia, 1945-1952

Dr. Naida Michal Brandl, recipient of a 2017 Fred and Ellen Lewis / JDC Archives Fellowship, gave her public lecture, which examined how Croatia’s Jewish community was transformed in the postwar period. Four-fifths of Croatia’s Jewish population perished in the Holocaust and most of the prewar Jewish organizations did not resume their activities after 1945. The lecture discussed the important role played by international Jewish organizations, such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), in the survival of the small and weakened community.

Dr. Naida Michal Brandl is an Assistant Professor at the Chair of Judaic Studies, Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb in Croatia. Her research in the JDC Archives is on JDC’s role in the reestablishment of Jewish religious communities in Croatia (Yugoslavia) in the aftermath of the Shoah.

The JDC Archives Fellowships allow scholars engaged in graduate level, post-doctoral, or independent study to conduct research in the JDC Archives, either in New York or Jerusalem. All fellows give a public presentation on their research; watch more of these JDC fellowship lectures here.