The application deadline has passed
Sunday, July 26– Friday, July 31, 2026
The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum invites applications for the 2026 Joint Workshop: Towards an Integrated History of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe – New Research and Perspectives. The workshop is organized in cooperation with the Greenberg Chair in Holocaust Studies at NYU and The Center for Research on the Holocaust in Poland, The International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, and is co-convened by Avinoam Patt (NYU) and Havi Dreifuss (Tel Aviv University). The program is scheduled for July 26–July 31, 2026, and will take place at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and NYU Washington, DC.
Workshop Overview
The workshop will focus on early-career scholars, including advanced PhD students and post-docs, conducting new research on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, aiming to facilitate dialogue and connections between junior research communities in Israel, Europe, and the United States. In 1997, Saul Friedländer called for the writing of an integrated history of the Holocaust that would incorporate "the policies of the perpetrators, the attitudes of surrounding society, and the world of the victims." Over the past 25 years, a new generation of Holocaust scholarship has taken up this call, utilizing archival source material from newly available collections in Eastern Europe, together with materials created by the victims of persecution, sources that reflect the diverse roles of local societies, and new approaches to incorporating many forms of testimony. This research effort has led to new insights and a more nuanced understanding of the unfolding of events on the local level. At the same time, it challenges definitions, embraces new methodologies, and poses new questions about the entanglement of all parts of societies in the Holocaust.
This interactive workshop seeks to include new scholarship on these aspects of the Holocaust, with a focus on the years 1939–1946 in Eastern Europe. Special attention will be given to interdisciplinary research, encouraging participation from scholars across history, literature, anthropology, sociology, political science, and related fields. We also welcome original uses of documentation, including written, visual, and material culture, as well as digital methodologies. Workshop sessions will address broader issues related to developments in Holocaust historiography, along with focused discussion on specific research topics presented by participants.
We encourage presenters to use the workshop not only as an opportunity to share their findings, but also to engage in critical reflection on the methodological, theoretical, and practical questions their research raises. Together, we hope to examine how various types of sources are interpreted, what challenges they or their analysis present, and how scholars have sought to address these issues. To facilitate meaningful discussion, participants will be asked to circulate brief materials in advance. The aim is to foster thoughtful and collaborative conversations from which all participants can benefit.
In addition to traditional historical approaches, the workshop welcomes work that draws on new analytical lenses, such as gender, emotions, materiality, memory politics, and the complex intersections of entangled histories.
Daily sessions will consist of presentations and roundtable discussions led by participants, co-conveners and Museum staff, as well as research in the Museum’s collections. The workshop aims to cultivate a sustainable scholarly network that supports collaboration, mentorship, and the exchange of ideas across national and disciplinary boundaries by bringing together a new generation of scholars. The entire program will be conducted in English.
This workshop is made possible with support from the Maurice R. and Corinne P. Greenberg Fund.
Schedule
Sunday, July 26
NYU-DC 10-10:45 - Welcome, opening remarks, housekeeping, introductions
10:45-11:00 - Break 11:00-12:30 - Discussion led by Avinoam Patt (NYU) and Havi Dreifuss (Tel Aviv University)
Holocaust History: Regional, Local, or Global? A discussion on analytical frameworks and our sense of audience.
12:30-14:00 - Lunch
14:00-15:30 - Ghettos and the Mechanics of Occupation in Poland
Noam Leibman (University of Haifa, Israel): A Comparative Perspective on Warsaw, Lodz, Vilna, and Stanisławów
Aleksandra Bankowska (Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland): The German Authorities in Warsaw and Jewish Social Welfare, 1940–1942
15:30-15:45 - Break
15:45-17:45 - Body as a Site of Power: Gender, Health, and Survival/ Physical experience of the victims
Rotem Taitler (Tel Aviv University, Israel): Institutionalized Sexual Violence in the Nazi Concentration Camps: The Case of Auschwitz and Buchenwald
Anna Veronica Pobbe (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy): Health Meanings: Inside and Outside the Ghetto Fences
Joanna Spyra (University of Bergen, Norway/University of Huddersfield, UK): Listening to Space: Emotional Geographies of Women’s Survival at Trawniki
Monday, July 27
USHMM 10:00-11:30 - Discussion led by Avinoam Patt (NYU) and Havi Dreifuss (Tel Aviv University)
The Limits of the Archive: A session on “reading against the grain” of Polish and German administrative documents.
11:30-11:45 - Break
11:45-1:15 - Intimate Ties and Local Relational Dynamics
Miranda Brethour (Penn State, USA): Administering Operation Reinhard in the Rural Lublin District: The Deportations of March to December 1942
Yael Robinson Gottfeld (Tel Aviv University, Israel): Emotional Communities after the Holocaust: Rethinking Intimacy through the Case of a Mixed Polish–Jewish Family
1:15-2:15 - Lunch
2:15-3:00 - Introduction to the Library
3:00-5:00 - Optional: Research in the Library
Tuesday, July 28
USHMM 10:00-12:00 - Bureaucratic Battlefields: The Individual vs. the State Machinery
Madeline Vadkerty (BISLA, Slovakia): Petitions to Slovak President Jozef Tiso from Jews and Gentiles during the Holocaust
Irina Nicorici (Jewish History Museum Moldova, Moldova): Jewish Statelessness and the Bureaucratic Battlefields of the Holocaust in Romania, 1938-1944
Justyna Majewska (Jewish Historical Institute, Poland): Paths of Risk: Jewish Legal and Illegal Journeys through Occupied Poland
12:00-1:00 Lunch with MCAHS staff
1:00-2:30 - Discussion led by Avinoam Patt (NYU) and Havi Dreifuss (Tel Aviv University)
Reflections on the current state of the field of Holocaust Studies.
2:30-3:00 - Break
3:00-4:30 - Mapping Networks and Microhistories
Tomer Sagie (Yad Vashem, Israel): The Social Network of the Righteous Among the Nations From Narrative to Network: Automated Extraction of Rescuer Names and Rescue Chronology from Yad Vashem's M31 Archive Using NLP and Large Language Models
Borbála Klacsmann (Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary): Pest County’s Jewish Population
Wednesday, July 29
Shapell Center 10:00-5:00 - Individual Research and Consultation at Shapell
Thursday, July 30
USHMM 10:00-11:30 - Discussion led by Avinoam Patt (NYU) and Havi Dreifuss (Tel Aviv University)
The Spatial & Digital Turn: A session on how DH (Digital Humanities) tools and spatial mapping are transforming our understanding of rescue networks and motion in space.
11:30-11:45 - Break
11:45-1:15 - Leadership and Historiography in Transition
Heléna Huhák (ELTE, Hungary): The Place of the Hungarian Holocaust in Europe: Sources, Frameworks, Approaches
Talia Farkash (The Open University of Israel, Israel): Between Coercion and Survival: Moral Injury and the Jewish Order Police in Tarnów
1:15-2:15 - Lunch
2:15-4:00 - Concluding group discussions
Friday, July 31
USHMM 10:00-12:00 - Overview of MCAHS programs and offers for researchers
12:00-1:00 - Farewell Lunch
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center’s mission is to ensure the long-term growth and vitality of Holocaust Studies. To do that, it is essential to provide opportunities for new scholarship. The vitality and the integrity of Holocaust Studies requires openness, independence, and free inquiry so that new ideas are generated and tested through peer review and public debate. The opinions of scholars expressed before, during the course of, or after their activities with the Mandel Center do not represent and are not endorsed by the Mandel Center or the Museum.
Questions should be directed to iaprograms@ushmm.org.