Older Jews and the Holocaust

Co-edited with Dr. Christine Schmidt (Wiener Holocaust Library) and Dr. Elizabeth Anthony (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum), this volume in-progress (under contract with Wayne State University Press) focuses on the experiences of older Jews before, during, and after the Holocaust. It tackles age as a multilayered category of analysis that includes not just biological age but also self-understanding and contemporary social constructs and perspectives on age and the elderly.

This book reaches beyond the standard narration that tends to marginalize elderly Jews by highlighting mainly their vulnerability and death to explore how older Jews lived through genocide, navigated the aftermath of the atrocities, and how other actors (individuals, communities, organizations, states) reacted to the situation and needs of older Jews during the Holocaust, as well as to elderly survivors after the war.

The book will both draw upon and contribute to a recent turn in Holocaust studies that zooms in on age, and will explore intersections with other categories of analysis, including gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity. The goal of the volume is to highlight new avenues of research, emphasize underutilized archival sources, and propel more scholarly and public interest in the crucial but understudied factor of advanced age in one’s prewar, Holocaust, and postwar experience. 

Older Jews and the Holocaust has confirmed funding support for a subvention for open-access publication and for accompanying academic events from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), the German Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (EVZ), the German Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) and the Ernest Hecht Charitable Foundation.

UPCOMING EVENTS

January 5, 2025: "New Perspectives on Age: Older Jews and the Holocaust" | American Historical Association

PAST EVENTS

December 2024 | Older People and the Holocaust: A Workshop for Doctoral Students and Early Career Researchers | The Wiener Holocaust Library | Link

November 2024 | “Challenging the Discourse on Age: Older Jews and the Holocaust” | Panel at Holocaust Educational Foundation’s Lessons and Legacies Southern California | Claremont McKenna College and the University of Southern California

October 2024 | Elizabeth Anthony, “Elderly Holocaust survivors in Vienna in the immediate postwar period” | Beit Theresienstadt | Online

September 2024 | “Older Jews and the Holocaust” Symposium | U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum | Program & Recording

PUBLICITY

Jared Feldschreiber, “Claims Conference Co-Hosts Day-Long ‘Older Jews and the Holocaust’ in Washington,” Queens Jewish Link, September 18, 2024, Link.