Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education

Research Fellows

Alexa Asher — Sun, 05 Jul 2020 07:02:40 +0000

Weiss-Livnat Research Fellows

Dr. Michal Aharony received her PhD in political science from the New School for Social Research in 2010. She is an Editor of, The Journal of Holocaust Research, and a teaching fellow at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She is the author of the book, Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Total Domination: The Holocaust, Plurality and Resistance (Routledge, 2015). Her recent articles include: “Fredy Hirsch: Changing Perspectives of his Memory,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, (forthcoming, Spring 2021); “Nihilism and Antisemitism: The Reception of Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night in Israel,” Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, Vol. 19, no. 1, 2015; “Über das Lager – die Vernichtung des Menschen als Menschen in der totalen Herrschaft,” in: Julia Schulze Wessel, Christian Volk, und Samuel Salzborn (Hrsg.), Ambivalenzen der Ordnung – Der Staat im Denken Hannah Arendts, Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2013; and “Hannah Arendt and the Idea of Total Domination,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2010) 24 (2): 193-224.

Professor Stefan Ihrig is a professor of history at the University of Haifa. He works on various aspects of European and Middle Eastern history with an interest in the media as well as political and social discourses. Prof. Ihrig received his Ph.D. in History fro the University of Cambridge. Formerly, Prof. Ihrig was a Polonsky Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, a lecturer at the University of Regensburg and the Free University Berlin, as well as researcher and project assistant at the Georg Eckert Institute, Braunschweig. His most recent book is Justifying Genocide – Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler (Harvard University Press, 2016). His previous book, Ataturk in the Nazi Imagination (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2014), received an official commendation in the 2013 Fraenkel Prize Competition of the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide.

Dr. Shmuel Lederman received his Ph.D. from the University of Haifa in 2012. He specializes in political theory and genocide studies. He is currently working on a book project about Hannah Arendt and genocide studies. His recent book publication, Hannah Arendt and Participatory Democracy: A People’s Utopia (Palgrave, 2019) centers on a relatively neglected theme in the scholarly literature on Hannah Arendt’s political thought: her support for a new form of government in which citizen councils would replace contemporary representative democracy and allow citizens to participate directly in decision-making in the public sphere. He currently serves as the academic manager of the research project “Sites of Tension” on the shifts in Holocaust memory and antisemitism in Europe, headed by Prof. Kochavi and Dr. Nurit Novis.

Dr. Joanna Beata Michlic is a social and cultural historian, and founder and first Director of HBI (Hadassah-Brandeis Institute) Project on Families, Children, and the Holocaust at Brandeis University. She is an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the UCL Centre for the Study of Collective Violence, the Holocaust and Genocide, UCL Institute for Advances Studies, and an Honorary Senior Associate at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) in London. Her research focuses on social and cultural history of Poland and East European Jews, the Holocaust and its memory in Europe, East European Jewish childhood, rescue and rescuers of Jews in East Central Europe and antisemitism, racism and nationalism in Europe. She is a recipient of many prestigious academic awards and fellowships, most recently Gerda Henkel Fellowship, 2017 – 2021. She is currently working on the book project on the history and memory of rescue of Jews in Poland. Her forthcoming single-authored monographs are Piętno Zagłady Wojenna i powojenna historia oraz pamięć żydowskich dzieci ocalałych w Polsce (the Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw 2020) and Lessons from the Holocaust: History and (Self)-Representations of Jewish Child Survivors (NUP, 2021).

Dr. Nurit Novis-Deutsch received her Ph.D. from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem’s Psychology Department and completed her Post-Doctoral training at UC Berkeley, California. She is a social psychologist researching moral psychology, values, and religion in educational frameworks. She is a lecturer at the Department of the Learning Sciences at the University of Haifa, Israel. Her research concerns the ways in which people create and manage contradictory frames of meaning and organize their identities within multiple social contexts. Research projects include pluralistic reasoning; outgroup dehumanization; interdisciplinary teaching and learning; religious meaning-making, and moral education in the context of Holocaust memory. Her recent work has been published in the Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (2015), Teaching in Higher Education (2016), The Journal for Behavioral Sciences (2017), Teaching and Teacher Education (2018), Theory & Psychology (2018, 2020), Studies in Higher Education (2019), Religion (2019) and other journals, as well as many chapters in academic books.

Dr. Rachel E. Perry received her Ph.D. in Art History at Harvard University. She teaches in the Weiss Livnat Graduate Holocaust Studies program at the University of Haifa on Visual Culture. The recipient of an EHRI Fellowship at the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris, she was a Senior Research Fellow at the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research. Her articles have appeared in many peer-reviewed journals including October, History and Memory, Les Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne, Revue 20/21ème siècle, Holocaust Studies: a Journal of Culture and History, French Cultural Studies, RIHA and Art Bulletin. In 2018, she curated the exhibition “Arrivals, Departures: The Oscar Ghez Collection” at the Hecht Museum and authored the catalogue A Memorial to Jewish Artists, Victims of Nazism. Her most recent article is “Nathalie Kraemer’s Rising Voice: Letting the Silences of History Speak,” Ars Judaica (March 2020). She is currently working on an annotated translation of Hersh Fenster’s yizkor book Our Martyred Artists with Barbara Harshav.

Dr. Jacob Tovy specializes in the political history of the State of Israel between the years 1967-1948. In this context, he has been examining Israel-Germany relations over the past decade, emphasizing the 1952 Israeli-German reparations agreement. Dr. Toby has written three books in the Hebrew language. One of them was translated into English. Another of his books, which discusses the reparations agreement, is currently being translated into English. Currently, Dr. Toby is working on a new book that examines the Israeli public’s attitude in general and the political system in particular towards Germany from the end of World War II in 1945 to the establishment of relations between Bonn and Jerusalem in 1965.

Weiss-Livnat P.h.D. Candidates

Lukas Meissel is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Haifa. His doctoral project focuses on perpetrator photography in Nazi concentration camps, specifically photographs taken by SS men and developed at Erkennungsdienste (identification departments). The aim of the project is to investigate not only what these pictures show, but to interpret them as visual perpetrator narratives of the concentration camps. Prior to his studies in Israel, he worked as a historian for the Jewish community of Vienna and as deputy chairperson of the Verein Gedenkdienst. He also worked on projects on behalf of Yad Vashem and guided numerous study trips. Meissel has held fellowships in Israel, the USA, Germany, and Austria and has published on visual history, Holocaust studies/education, and antisemitism.

Dissertation: The Perpetrator’s Gaze. SS Photography Taken at Concentration Camps

Eugenia Mihalcea is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Haifa, General History Department. Her research, supervised by Professor Stefan Ihrig, focuses on how the narratives about the Holocaust in Transnistria were constructed in Communist Romania and Israel between 1945 and 1989. Prior to her doctoral studies, Eugenia graduated from the Weiss-Livnat International MA Program in Holocaust Studies. She also holds an MA diploma from the University of Bucharest and wrote her final MA thesis about Children survivors of the Holocaust in Transnistria as a Visiting Research Fellow at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her academic interests include memory studies, cultural studies, and Holocaust Education.

Dissertation: (Re)constructing the history and memory of the Holocaust in Transnistria in Romania and Israel between 1945 and 1989

Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education Archive

Alexa Asher — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 11:43:19 +0000

Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education Archive

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Permanent Exhibitions

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David Carson

Sopia Schwimmer

Damian Barkley

The Workshop

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“Everything you can imagine is real”

Pablo Picasso

Academic Collaborations and Educational Programs

Alexa Asher — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 07:47:24 +0000

Academic Collaborations and Educational Programs

Holocaust Research: International Perspective Conference with USHMM

In July 2019, The Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education hosted a collaborative conference with and the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The conference brought together alumni of the Weiss-Livnat MA Program who presented their research in front of current and former Heideman Fellows from the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. We were honored to have Professor Yehuda Bauer as the keynote speaker.

Joint Seminar and Workshop: National Holocaust Museum in Holland

In May 2019, The Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education was pleased to host a team of representatives from the soon-to-be inaugurated National Holocaust Museum of Holland for an engaging, two-day exchange discussing the challenges and obstacles facing the construction of a contemporary Holocaust Museum in the 21st century. We look forward to our continued collaboration with the NHM through initiatives such as the upcoming academic symposium: Challenges of Holocaust Museums Today.

The Future of Holocaust Memory: A Global Consideration of Holocaust Commemoration Held in the American South.

In September 2019, we were pleased to partner with the University of Richmond, VA, and the Virginia Holocaust Museum to present the conference The Future of Holocaust Memory: A Global Consideration of Holocaust Commemoration Held in the American South. This week-long conference took place on the beautiful University of Richmond campus. It featured 30 international Holocaust scholars from around the world and five Weiss-Livnat alumni currently pursuing PhDs among the participants. Richmond was chosen as the host city for the conference, given its historical significance as the former capital of the confederacy. Workshops throughout the conference aimed to incorporate relevant local sites, such as the American Civil War Museum and the T. Tyler Potterfeild Memorial Bridge, as a means of highlighting the city and region’s traumatic history.

Ben Gurion University – Weiss-Livnat Center Joint Research Seminar

In collaboration with the Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Dr. Reuven Hecht Chair in History at the University of Haifa, the Weiss-Livnat Center organized the research seminar, “Views on Israeli Society through Holocaust Plays.” Since the end of World War II, playwrights in Israel have produced works about the Holocaust and its context within Israeli society. Therefore, the play’s texts can be seen as cultural lenses through which Israeli society can be analyzed in relation to the Holocaust themes presented. As part of this conference, a group of researchers engaged in a study of Israeli society and Holocaust plays. The seminar formulated a corpus of Holocaust plays written in Hebrew from the end of World War II to the present day in Israel. Following the workshop, participants were asked to write an academic article about the evolving place the Holocaust holds in Israeli society. All articles will be subject to peer review and published in a special volume entitled “Plays on the Holocaust: A Look at Israeli Society,” edited by Ofer Schiff and David Guedj.

Sites of Tension

Alexa Asher — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 10:30:11 +0000

Sites of Tension

Sites of Tension - Shifts in Holocaust Memory, Antisemitism, and Political Contestation in Europe

The ST research project is a comparative study of the changes taking place in Holocaust memory in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain, and the UK. Each of these countries bears a distinct Holocaust legacy and all five of them face contemporary political, economic, and immigration-related challenges. The intersection of past and present is expressed in a surge in nationalism, revisions to WWII narratives including Holocaust distortion and rises in antisemitism and delegitimization of Israel (beyond the scope of legitimate political differences). These phenomena seem to be related, but the exact relations between them have not yet been methodically examined and require an empirical study. To achieve this goal, we established an Israeli-led team of international experts from five countries. Jointly, we are collecting and comparing datasets from three cultural sites:

National-political public discourses regarding WWII and Holocaust memory, independently and in conjunction with antisemitic discourses and delegitimization of the State of Israel.
Attitudes of Holocaust educators on Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust.
Social media discourses from platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

The 3X5 analysis between and within the countries and sites of memory will allow us to reach data-driven conclusions about the relation between changes in Europe and contemporary Holocaust memory, antisemitism, and attitudes towards Israel. This, in turn, will allow us to make appropriate recommendations to Israeli and European policy-makers and educational leadership, to minimize and even to reverse the harm being rendered to Holocaust memory, to Jews worldwide and to the standing of the State of Israel in Europe.

Our Researchers

Professor Arieh J. Kochavi is a Full Professor of Modern History at the University of Haifa, Israel. He is the Head of the Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education as well as the Weiss-Livnat International MA Program in Holocaust Studies. Prof. Kochavi is also the Chair of the Editorial Board for The Journal of Holocaust Research and Head of the Dr. Reuven Hecht Chair in History. Prof. Kochavi has published over fifty scholarly articles and five books; Displaced Persons and International Politics (1992), (Hebrew), Prelude to Nuremberg: Allied War Crimes Policy and the Question of Punishment (1998), Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945-1948 (2001) – winner of the Yad Vashem’s Buchman Prize, Confronting Captivity: Britain, the United States, and their POWs in Nazi Germany (2005), and The Road to Nuremberg Trials (2006) (Hebrew).

Dr. Nurit Novis-Deutsch is a lecturer in the Department of Learning, Teaching, and Instruction within the Faculty of Education at the University of Haifa, Israel. She received her PhD from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem’s Psychology Department and completed her Post-Doctoral training at UC Berkeley, California. Dr. Novis-Deutsch’s psychological research concerns the ways in which people create meaning and make sense of their identity within multiple social contexts, and the modes through which they manage these often-contradictory frames of meaning. She is particularly interested in the impact of individuals’ meaning management and identity-work on their attitudes towards others. In studying these questions, Dr. Novis-Deutsch focuses on values, morality, religion, culture, and identity, as significant points of convergence between the collective and the personal, exploring intrapsychic and inter-group conflicts between them.

Dr. Tracy Adams is a researcher at the University of Haifa, Israel. She received her Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Sociology and Anthropology Department. Her research interests include the intersection of memory, conflict, and politics, and how meaning is constructed and mobilized through interactive processes of negotiation. She is particularly interested in how collective memory is used and manipulated in political rhetoric as a site of memory. She has been published in Memory Studies, Review of International Studies, and The Sociological Quarterly.

Prof. Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs, of the Jagiellonian University in Warsaw, Poland, teaches at the UNESCO Chair for Education about the Holocaust at the Institute for European Studies at the Jagiellonian University (JU) and between 2008 and 2016 was the Director of the Center for Holocaust Studies at the JU. She was a Fellow of the Kosciuszko Foundation (2018/2019) at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA, 2011/2012 Ina Levine Invitational Scholar at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and earlier a Pew Fellow at the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, a visiting fellow at the Oxford University, the Cambridge University, a DAAD fellow at the Memorial and Educational Site House of the Wannsee Conference.

Dr. Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann is a Lecturer for Visual Culture, Film, and German Studies at the Department of Communication and Journalism and in the European Forum of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He holds his Ph.D. from the Free University of Berlin and was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Interdisciplinary PhD-Program “Media of History – History of Media” at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, and a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Holocaust Research Yad Vashem. He has published three books (on cinematic narration of the Holocaust, the German filmmaker Romuald Karmakar and German-Israeli film history), co-edited four volumes (on European docudrama, contemporary German Cinema, the visual memory of the GDR in documentary film, and on emotions in cinema) and published several articles on cinematic, digital and social media memory of the Holocaust, the use and appropriation of archive footage, and the history of postwar German cinema in international journals such as Media, Culture & Society, New Media & Society, Memory Studies, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, and the Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook. He is a consortium member in the EU-funded Horizon 2020 research and innovation action “Visual History of the Holocaust: Rethinking Curation in the Digital Age”.

Dr. Anikó Félix received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Eötvös Lóránd Science University, Budapest, Hungary. Her main fields of expertise are the contemporary far-right movements and parties and their gender aspect, right-wing populism, and antisemitism. Her focus is mostly Hungary and Eastern Europe, but in 2013 with a research scholarship, she conducted research on the Greek far-right, as well. As part of her research, she examined the racist discourse of the Hungarian far-right through parliamentary speeches with discourse analysis and network analysis of big data. She worked for political think tanks as a political analyst and was involved in education projects of NGO-s. Previously she was the Program Manager for Jewish Life and Antisemitism program at the Tom Lantos Institute, where among other roles she was a member of the Hungarian IHRA Delegation. At TLI she co-led a research project on modern antisemitism in the Visegrád countries and led educational programs against antisemitism and any kind of prejudices. Currently she is working for the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities (MAZSIHISZ), where her task is to establish a social science research center, where she will serve as executive director.

Prof. Piotr Forecki is a professor at the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. Academic Interests: Polish collective memory of the Holocaust; Holocaust denial in Poland and Europe; Anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence in pre-war Poland and after WWII; Problem of Polish complicity in the Holocaust; Contemporary Anti-Semitic rhetoric in Poland and Central-Eastern Europe. Most significant publications: Od Shoah do Strachu. Spory o polsko-żydowską przeszłość i pamięć w debatach publicznych [From Shoah to Fear: Disputes over the Polish-Jewish Past and Memory in Public Debates], Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, Poznań 2010; Reconstructing Memory. The Holocaust in Polish Public Debates, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH 2013; Po Jedwabnem. Anatomia pamięci funkcjonalnej [After Jedwabne: An Anatomy of Functional Memory], 2018, Wydawnictwo Instytutu Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Warszawa 2018.

Dr. Claudia Globisch is a researcher at the Institute for Employment Research in Nuremberg, Germany. Until June 2019 she was Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of Innsbruck, Austria coordinating the field “Applied Methods of Social Research.” She received her doctorate at the University of Erlangen 2009 with a thesis on antisemitism from the left and far-right in Germany and worked as a post-doctoral research assistant at the University of Leipzig. Her habilitation is a study on activating social policy and poverty. At present she´s working on projects on 1) social inclusion, longterm unemployment and the social consequences of the corona crisis 2) on 21st-century populism and 3) on antisemitism and methods in the WorldWideWeb.

Maximilian Hauer studied Philosophy and Sociology in Leipzig and Vienna and holds an M.A. from Leipzig University, Germany where he is currently a Ph.D. candidate. In his dissertation, he works on the concept of alienation in German Idealism. His sociological research interests include political ideologies of inequality, nationalism and gender relations. Recent publications: „In the Name of the Future. Prophecy as Critique in F.W.J. Schelling and Paul Tillich.“ In: kabiri. The Official Journal of the North American Schelling Society. Vol. 2 (forthcoming); Die Kriegsmetapher in der Coronakrise. In: Dieter F. Bertz (ed.): Die Welt nach Corona. Berlin 2020 (forthcoming).

Prof. Wulf Kansteiner is a Professor of Memory Studies and Historical Theory at Aarhus University in Denmark. He studied at UCLA and was for 15 years a faculty member of the history department of Binghamton University (SUNY). Kansteiner’s empirical work addresses the role of visual media (film, TV, gaming) in the formation of social memory. His theoretical texts engage with key concepts in the field of memory studies (trauma, generation, postmemory, migration & memory). Together with Christina Morina, Kansteiner is currently developing an outline of a handbook on “History & Memory.” Morina and Kansteiner hope that the handbook will reignite discussions between historians and memory studies experts about their complementary and competitive strategies of making sense of the past. Kansteiner is co-founder and co-editor of the Sage-journal Memory Studies, has supported the founding of the Memory Studies Association, and is co-organizer (with Hans Lauge Hansen and Jessica Ortner) of the 2021 Mnemonics Summer School. Kansteiner is also active in the field of historical theory. In this context, he belongs to a cohort of post-narrativist theorists eager to reconcile the insights of the linguistic turn with historians’ self-perception of their work and recent advances in narratology, linguistics, and argumentation theory.

Dr. Marta Simó is an associated lecturer in Intercultural Education at the Universitat de Barcelona, Spain, and an associated researcher of Sociology of Religion, Memory, and Identity at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Main fields of Interests: Holocaust Education, Holocaust Memory, Politics of Religion, Memory, and Identity, and Intercultural Education. Main publications and contributions: Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust in Brenneis, S. J., & Herrmann, G. (Eds.). (2020). Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust: History and Representation. University of Toronto Press; Simó M. (2019). “España y el holocausto: entre la salvación y la condena al exterminio para la población judía” Revista Hispania Nova. Extraordinario n. 1.; Research in Romance Languages: Latin America, Spain, Portugal and Italy, and Students learning about the Holocaust, both in Eckmann, M., Stevick, D., & Ambrosewicz-Jacobs, J. (2017). Research in Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust. A dialogue beyond borders. Berlin: Metropol Verlag. Current project: Overcoming barriers: Enhancing intercultural understanding learning and praxis. JRC/SVQ/2019/MVP/1556 – Educational needs of Teachers in the EU for inclusive education in the context of diversity (INNO4DIV).

Dr. Zsuzsanna Toronyi is an Archivist and Museum expert specialized in Judaica. Since 2015 she is the Director of the Jewish Museum and Archives in Hungary, where she has been working since 1994. She is an associate professor at the Cultural History department of the Rabbinical Seminary – University of Jewish Studies, Budapest, and lectures on Jewish material culture at the Jewish Studies Department of the ELTE University, Budapest as well.

Dr. Shmuel Lederman received his Ph.D. from the University of Haifa, Israel in 2012. He specializes in political theory and genocide studies and has published articles in major journals in these fields. His first book, Hannah Arendt and Participatory Democracy: A People’s Utopia, has recently been published by Palgrave Macmillan. He serves as a research fellow at the Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education, as well as at the Forum for Regional Thinking – a research institute dedicated to the study of the Middle East. He is also the assistant editor of the journal History and Memory, which focuses on the relationship between history and collective memory from various perspectives.

Academic Research Projects

Alexa Asher — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 08:22:52 +0000

Academic Research Projects

Weiss-Livnat Center Archives: The Strochlitz Collection

The Strochlitz Collection is comprised of materials focused primarily on the Holocaust in Hungary and Romania. The collection is split into three sections. The first section includes documents, survivor testimonies, correspondences, postcards, photographs, drawings, newspapers, leaflets, and reports from the International Auschwitz Committee. While these materials primarily concern Hungary and Romania, there are also archival materials addressing the Holocaust in Transylvania, Yugoslavia, Italy, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. The second section contains materials regarding the history of the Hungarian and Romanian Jewish communities before the Holocaust. The third section contains personal correspondences, diaries, and research materials of prominent Hungarian Jewish figures. There are hundreds of survivor testimonies as well as microfilms and video cassette tapes about different episodes of WWII. Full catalog coming soon.

Sites of Tension – Shifts in Holocaust Memory, Antisemitism, and Political Contestation in Europe

Weiss-Livnat Center Research Fellows and Ph.D. Candidates

As part of the promotion and encouragement of research within the Wiess-Livnat Center, six scholars from both Israel and abroad were appointed from various fields of expertise – history, art, psychology, and political science to serve as Research Fellows. In their role as Fellows, these researchers submit research proposals to external research funds and publish their research under the Center’s auspices. Meet current Research Fellows and Ph.D. Candidates here.

Young Research Fellows Program

The Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education created an academic program that aims to support and foster graduates of our MA program who are currently pursuing doctoral degrees. The framework is intended to serve as an academic meeting place where current Ph.D. students can enrich each other’s research, consult with experts, and hear the latest news and updates from the field. More information coming soon.

Staff

Alexa Asher — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 08:19:00 +0000

Weiss-Livnat Center Staff

Professor Arieh J. Kochavi Head of the Weiss-Livnat Center for Holocaust Research and Education

Dr. Yael Granot-Bein Director of the Weiss-Livnat International MA Program in Holocaust Studies

Anat Weiner of the Weiss-Livnat Center for Holocaust Research and Education Graduate of the Weiss-Livnat International MA Program in Holocaust Studies

Ilana Escher Program Coordinator of the Weiss-Livnat International MA Program in Holocaust Studies

Alexa Asher Digital Communications Coordinator of the Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education Graduate of the Weiss-Livnat International MA Program in Holocaust Studies

Shlomit Kviti Administrator for the Wiess-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education

"The one concerned with days, plants wheat; with years, plants trees; with generations, educates people."

– Janusz Korczak

Weiss-Livnat Family

Alexa Asher — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 11:09:59 +0000

The Weiss-Livnat Family

The Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education was created with and is sustained by the generous support of our donors.

Honorary Dr. Doron and Mrs. Marianne Livnat

Doron and Marianne Livnat have ensured that the memory of his father, Yitzhak Livnat z”l, lives on through their generous support of the MA program in Holocaust Studies. In 2018 they expanded their significant donation by endowing the funds to create an international, academic center, The Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education. The center is the umbrella organization under which the MA Program, The Journal of Holocaust Research, and the many academic and commemorative Holocaust events can flourish. We are incredibly grateful for their continued friendship and charitable contributions.

Our Founder, Yitzhak Livnat z”l

The Weiss-Livnat International MA Program in Holocaust Studies is named after the founder of the program, Yitzhak Livnat z”l. Yitzhak was a Holocaust survivor from Hungary and it is with great pride and honor that our program memorializes his and his family’s story. The first five Cohorts of the MA Program had the honor to meet with and hear Yitzhak’s incredible personal story of survival and triumph. Since Yitzhak’s passing in 2017, the legacy of the Weiss-Livnat MA Program is preserved by his son and daughter-in-law, Honorary Dr. and Mrs. Doron and Marianne Livnat.

At the University of Haifa’s 44th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors in 2016, Doron Livnat was awarded an honorary doctorate in recognition of his outstanding leadership, which blends business success and far-reaching public and social activity; on his assistance to disadvantaged groups in society, out of an understanding and belief that strengthening them is the best guarantee of a more moral, just and successful society; on the contribution to promoting study and research of the Holocaust at the University of Haifa to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and pass the narrative on to future generations; on the continued support of the “Access for All” program and its impact on the population in northern Israel; and on his being an ambassador for the University of Haifa all around the world.

Doron Livnat at the opening exhibition, The Last Swiss Holocaust Survivors

Doron and Marianne Livnat with Cohort V of the MA Program in Holocaust Studies

Doron Livnat with the 1st Cohort of the Innovation Hub

Wiess-Livnat Donors

Alexa Asher — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 11:03:11 +0000

Public Events

Alexa Asher — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 10:51:07 +0000

Public Events

Past Events

The Cultural Life in the Terezin Ghetto

In November 2019, the Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education, in cooperation with the Czech Embassy in Israel hosted a series of events commemorating the cultural and spiritual resistance of those imprisoned in the Terezin Ghetto during the Holocaust.

Over two days, residents of Haifa were invited to enjoy:
-Art exhibition, “Perspectives, Possible Ways of Grasping Reality”–the works of Gertrude, and Emmanuel Groag, and their son Wilhelm.
-A screening of the film “Defiant Requiem” which tells the story of Raphael Schechter, a choir conductor who led Terezin inmates in a unique performance of Verdi’s Requiem.
-Lecture by musicologist Prof. Lubomír Spurný, from the University of Masaryk in Brno on music created by composers in the Terezin Ghetto.
-Concert performed by soprano Irena Troupová and pianist Jan Dušek – Works by composers imprisoned in Terezin.

The Last Swiss Holocaust Survivor Exhibition

The Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education, The Embassy of Switzerland, and the Gamaraal Foundation were pleased to host the international exhibition, The Last Swiss Holocaust Survivors in March 2019

This traveling exhibition tells the story of fourteen Holocaust survivors from European countries, who found refuge in Switzerland after World War II. Some had survived concentration camps and extermination camps; others had saved themselves by escaping or hiding. The exhibition gives them a voice and a platform to tell their stories.

“Who Will Write Our History” Film Screening

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2019, the Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education participated in the global screening of the film ‘Who Will Write Our History.’

The film was shown to senior high school students from the local ‘Reali’ high school and was accompanied by a short lecture on the importance of historical archives. Students also participated in the international social media campaign to mark Holocaust Remembrance day by holding up signs that say “We Remember.”

Arrivals, Departures: The Oscar Ghez Collection

In 1978, Dr. Oscar Ghez de Castelnuovo (1905-1988) donated 137 works of art to the Hecht Museum at the University of Haifa in order to establish a “Memorial to Jewish Artists, Victims of Nazism.” Consisting of paintings, drawings, and sculptures, the collection showcases the works of 18 Jewish artists who lived in Paris before the Holocaust. Following the Nazi invasion of France, many were arrested by the Nazis and their French collaborators and interned in the French transit camps of Drancy, Gurs, Compiègne before being deported the death camps of Eastern Europe. In 2017, our MA students worked with Dr. Rachel Perry to research these 18 artists and compiled a catalog dedicated the lives and works of these artists. We are proud to share the digital version of the catalog, which is available to view here.

In the Spring of 2018 we were excited to open the exhibition Arrivals, Departures; The Oscar Ghez Collection in the Hecht Museum at the University of Haifa. Select students were given the opportunity to work with Dr. Rachel Perry as interns, curating and installing the exhibition. The exhibition ran for six months, after which time it was preserved indefinitely as a digital, online exhibition for the world to enjoy. Click here to enjoy the virtual exhibition, Arrivals, Departures, The Oscar Ghez Collection

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Alexa Asher — Wed, 06 May 2020 10:31:04 +0000

Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education

Research Fellows

Weiss-Livnat Research Fellows

Weiss-Livnat P.h.D. Candidates

Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education Archive

Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education Archive

Permanent Exhibitions

David Carson

Sopia Schwimmer

Damian Barkley

The Workshop

“Everything you can imagine is real”

Academic Collaborations and Educational Programs

Academic Collaborations and Educational Programs

Holocaust Research: International Perspective Conference with USHMM

Joint Seminar and Workshop: National Holocaust Museum in Holland

The Future of Holocaust Memory: A Global Consideration of Holocaust Commemoration Held in the American South.

Ben Gurion University – Weiss-Livnat Center Joint Research Seminar

Sites of Tension

Sites of Tension

Sites of Tension - Shifts in Holocaust Memory, Antisemitism, and Political Contestation in Europe

Our Researchers

Academic Research Projects

Academic Research Projects

Weiss-Livnat Center Archives: The Strochlitz Collection

Sites of Tension – Shifts in Holocaust Memory, Antisemitism, and Political Contestation in Europe

Weiss-Livnat Center Research Fellows and Ph.D. Candidates

Young Research Fellows Program

Staff

Weiss-Livnat Center Staff

"The one concerned with days, plants wheat; with years, plants trees; with generations, educates people."

Weiss-Livnat Family

The Weiss-Livnat Family

Honorary Dr. Doron and Mrs. Marianne Livnat

Our Founder, Yitzhak Livnat z”l

Doron Livnat at the opening exhibition, The Last Swiss Holocaust Survivors

Doron and Marianne Livnat with Cohort V of the MA Program in Holocaust Studies

Doron Livnat with the 1st Cohort of the Innovation Hub

Wiess-Livnat Donors

Public Events

Public Events

Past Events

The Cultural Life in the Terezin Ghetto

The Last Swiss Holocaust Survivor Exhibition

“Who Will Write Our History” Film Screening

Arrivals, Departures: The Oscar Ghez Collection

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