Michal Schvarc

Research Fellow (10/2017–08/2018)

„We Are all Aware of the Fact That the Jew Is Our Greatest Enemy.” The Carpathian Germans and their Share in the Holocaust in Slovakia

This project combines different methodological approaches to investigate the role of the German-speaking population in the Slovak Holocaust. It will incorporate socio-historical portrayals, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of newspapers, the political and organisational history of National Socialism, micro-history, and research on Nazi perpetrators. The project will analyse the interdependencies of racist ideology and antisemitic propaganda within its everyday exercise. Consequently, the antisemitic propaganda of the Deutsche Partei – the German Party in Slovakia – as the sole representative of the Carpathian Germans after 1938, the participation of their members in anti-Jewish riots, the entanglement of the party in ‘Aryanisations’, the role of the paramilitary volunteers in the deportations of 1942, the reactions of the German-speaking population to the events and mass killings, as well as the behaviour of the party and its sub-organisations after the military occupation of Slovakia by Nazi Germany at the end of August 1944 will be examined carefully. Finally, the question will be investigated whether and to what extent Carpathian Germans were held accountable in the post-war period and later in the 1950s and 1960s either in Czechoslovakia or in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Michal Schvarc completed his doctorate studies at the Matej-Bel University in Banská Bystrica in 2008 with a dissertation on the German Party of Slovakia, 1927–1938. After working in the Banská Bystrica State Archives, the National Slovakian National Museum, and the Slovak National Museum, he has since 2008 been working at the Historical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava.

Kateřina Králová

Research Fellow (08/2020–05/2021)

(INTER)MISSION. Parent-Child Separation due to Conflict in Twentieth-Century Europe

This project aims to shed light on how former child refugees of conflict zones and the communities they adhere(d) to in their host countries look back on these times. The research focusses primarily on externally displaced children separated from their parent(s) who were once threatened by violent conflict from the Second World War up to the Cold War. I take into account three focus groups: 1) the Kindertransporte, 2) child refugees from the Greek Civil War, and 3) child refugees from the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. My aim is to document and examine how they came to terms with their displacement and coped with family separation not only during their childhood but also – and most significantly – in adulthood. To this end, I regard social inclusion, adaptation mechanisms, and attitudes towards war as central analytical variables, all of which crystallised from my previous research on Holocaust survivors and Greek Civil War refugees.

Kateřina Králová is Associate Professor of Modern History and Head of the Department of Russian and Eastern European Studies (2017–2020) at Charles University, Prague. In her research, she has been focusing on reconciliation with the Nazi past, the Holocaust, and its aftermath. She authored the book Das Vermächtnis der Besatzung. Deutsch-griechische Beziehungen seit 1940 (Böhlau, 2016; BpB 2017) as well as numerous articles and volumes in Czech, English, German, and Greek. Her second book, about Holocaust survivors in postwar Greece, is under review.

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Petre Matei

Research Fellow (01/2021 – 7/2021)

Roma Deportations to Transnistria during the Second World War. Between Central Decision-Making and Local Initiatives

The deportations to which 25,000 Romanian Roma fell victim were not the result of German pressure on the Romanian government but the consequence of their long-term exclusion by local actors. To understand these deportations, it is thus necessary to compare the older attitudes toward Roma specific to certain milieus (nationalist parties, eugenicists, and law enforcement agencies) with the measures taken against Roma during the Second World War.

As the Roma in Romania suffered very different fates during the war, the project will examine how exactly such differences ensued. There was an overlap of agendas regarding the Roma on behalf of various actors who, in certain contexts, would collaborate or compete, radicalising themselves in the process. The criteria for identifying the ‘undesirable’ Roma were vague and subjective, allowing local stakeholders to interpret and negotiate them in accordance with their own agendas. This project also explores the defensive strategies embraced by the Roma deportees, who referred to the same formal criteria to prove that the measures against them were abusive.

Petre Matei is a researcher at the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Bucharest. He has been a research fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has carried out oral history interviews with Roma and Jewish survivors, has published around twenty articles on Roma history, and with Vintilă Mihăilescu he co-edited Condiția romă. Schimbarea discursului [The Roma Condition. Changing Discourse] (Iași 2014) and Roma. Der Diskurswandel (Vienna 2020). His research interests focus on Roma history, the Holocaust, compensation, and memory.

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Anna Menyhért

Research Fellow (9/2020 - 5/2021)

Trauma in the Digital Age

This project focusses on how digital environments change the nature of the transmission, representation, and processing of trauma, and introduces the emerging interdisciplinary field of Digital Trauma Studies. The project analyses how traumatic content reaches users on digital media and how social media platforms and online communities – such as Facebook groups related to present-day and historical traumas, migrant blogs, and tweet-chains including the #MeToo movement – can become platforms for processing trauma. The end result will be a book based on case studies linked to different social media platforms, including the Facebook group The Holocaust and My Family; migratory trauma and its political background in Hungarian migrants’ blogs; the contemporary cultural and political implications of the Treaty of Trianon as transmitted via YouTube; and the resilience of trauma victims in connection with the #MeToo campaign on Twitter. The book discusses how each digital media platform shapes trauma-related communication according to its own characteristic features.

Anna Menyhért is Professor of Trauma Studies at the Budapest University of Jewish Studies. From 2016 to 2018, she was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the University of Amsterdam. Previously, she led the Trauma and Gender in Literature and Culture Research Group at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. Her research interests include trauma studies, social media studies, memory studies, critical theory. and women’s writing.

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Katarzyna Nowak

Research Fellow (10/2021-08/2022)

'Recivilising' Refugees: Displaced Eastern Europeans in the Heart of  Divided Europe, 1945-1956

This project will reassess the experiences of Eastern European refugees airbrushed out of the main narratives of World War II displacement. During and after WWII, refugees from Eastern Europe – Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Roma, and others originating from pre-war Poland’s territory – were exposed to the rehabilitation projects drawn up by both the Western Allies and their own national elites. My research will focus on the hitherto unexplored topic of postwar humanitarian aid as a 20th century form of ‘civilising mission’ which aimed to incorporate these displaced Europeans into the communities of the Western world to hasten post-war reconstruction. To add nuance to the understanding of the refugee experience in the early Cold War period, this work integrates a bottom-up perspective with an institutional one by tracing and unearthing archival materials created by refugees from various social and ethnic backgrounds who found themselves in Allied-occupied Germany and Austria.

Katarzyna Nowak is a historian specialising in cultural and social history of Eastern Europe, with a particular interest in refugee and migrant history. During her doctoral and postdoctoral research at the University of Manchester, she focused on Displaced Persons in the early Cold War period in a global perspective. She is currently completing her first monograph, entitled Kingdom of Barracks. Polish Displaced Persons in Allied-occupied Germany and Austria, 1945-1952. She has published on the history of gender, refugees, and diaspora.

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Thomas Chopard

Research Fellow (02/2019–07/2019)

Jewish Migrations across Central and Eastern Europe after the Holocaust. A Transnational Perspective

This project will offer a comprehensive analysis of Jewish mass migrations after the Holocaust, analysing the reasons, trajectories, and legal treatment of Jewish migrants. It will encompass trajectories from their respective homelands to their final departure from Europe, combining a transnational approach with microhistories of this global phenomenon. By studying the implementation and variability of legal and humanitarian categories, it will especially focus on the elaboration of a hospitality policy in Europe for Jewish migrants after the Holocaust through the category of “Jewish Displaced Persons”.

Thomas Chopard holds a PhD from the EHESS in France and was until recently a Jewish studies postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. After focussing on anti-Jewish violence in Central and Eastern Europe between 1914 and 1924, his research now deals with Jewish post-Holocaust migrations.

Vojin Majstorović

Research Fellow (10/2017-07/2018) 

The Red Army and the Holocaust 1939–1948

This project examines the Soviet army’s encounter with the Shoah during and after the Second World War in the western Soviet Union, the Balkans, and East-Central Europe. The study illuminates the Red Army’s policies towards perpetrators, survivors, and their property, the military’s official line about the Holocaust, the use of Nazi crimes against Jews in Soviet war propaganda, the troops’ attitudes to the genocide, and interactions between Jewish survivors and Soviet soldiers. Ultimately, the project aims to illuminate how the Red Army ended the Holocaust on the Eastern Front, and what the Soviet victory meant for survivors, perpetrators, and liberators.

Vojin Majstorović received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 2017. His research focusses on Soviet involvement in the Balkans and Central Europe in the 1940s. He has held fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and at the Centre for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. His latest publication is The Red Army in Yugoslavia, 1944–1945, in: Slavic Review 75 (2016) 2, 396-421.

Research Fellowships 2017/2018 at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI)

The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) invites applications for its research fellowships for the academic year 2017/2018.

The VWI is an academic institution dedicated to the study and documentation of antisemitism, racism and the Holocaust. Conceived and established during Simon Wiesenthal’s lifetime, the VWI receives funding from the Austrian Ministry of Science, Research and Economy as well as the City of Vienna. Research at the institute focuses on the Holocaust in its European context, including its antecedents and its aftermath.

Scholars who have completed their Ph.D. studies and have produced works of scholarship are eligible for receiving a research fellowship. Research fellows will be able to conduct research on a topic of their choice in the field of Holocaust studies at the institute. Beyond the research work itself, the stay at the institute is intended to encourage communication and scientific exchange among the fellows at the institute. Research fellows are expected to support the institute's academic work and provide research adjective and support to Junior fellows. Research fellows must be regularly present at the VWI.

Research projects are to focus on a topic relevant to the research interests of the VWI. Within this parameter, applicants are free to choose their own topic, approach and methodology. Fellows will have access to the archives of the institute. It is expected that fellows will make use of relevant resources from the collection in their research projects. Research results will be the subject of formal fellow’s discussion and will be presented to the wider public at regular intervals. At the end of their stay, fellows are required to submit a research paper which will be peer-reviewed and published in VWI‘s e-journal S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation.

Research fellowships are awarded for a duration of between six and eleven months. They will have a work station with computer and internet access and will receive a monthly stipend of € 2,200. In addition, VWI will cover housing costs during the fellowship (up to € 800) as well as the costs of a round-trip to and from Vienna (coach class airfare or 2nd class train fare). There is an additional one-off payment of € 500 available for research conducted outside of Vienna or photocopying costs outside of the institute, where applicable.

Research fellows will be selected by the International Academic Advisory Board of the VWI.

Applications may be submitted in English or German and must include the following documents:

• completed application form,
• a detailed description of the research project, including the research objectives, an overview of existing research on the topic and methodology (12,000 characters max.)
• a list of publications and a CV with a photo, if not already included in application form (optional)

Please send your application in electronic format (if possible in one integral *.pdf-file) with the subject header "VWI Research Fellowships 2017/2018" by 29 January, 2017 to: 

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

If you do not get confirmation that we have received your proposal, please contact us.

Future research fellows are advised to endeavour to finance a part of their fellowship via a stipend from the Stipendienstiftung der Republik Österreich and to submit an application to this end after they have received notification of being awarded their fellowship.

Research Fellowships 2018/2019 at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI)

The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) invites applications for its research fellowships for the academic year 2018/2019.

The VWI is an academic institution dedicated to the study and documentation of antisemitism, racism, nationalsim and the Holocaust. Conceived and established during Simon Wiesenthal’s lifetime, the VWI receives funding from the Austrian Ministry of Science, Research and Economy as well as the City of Vienna. Research at the institute focuses on the Holocaust in its European context, including its antecedents and its aftermath.

Scholars who have completed their Ph.D. studies and have produced works of scholarship are eligible for receiving a research fellowship. Research fellows will be able to conduct research on a topic of their choice in the field of Holocaust studies at the institute. Beyond the research work itself, the stay at the institute is intended to encourage communication and scientific exchange among the fellows at the institute. Research fellows are expected to support the institute's academic work and provide research adjective and support to Junior fellows. Research fellows must be regularly present at the VWI.

Research projects are to focus on a topic relevant to the research interests of the VWI. Within this parameter, applicants are free to choose their own topic, approach and methodology. Fellows will have access to the archives of the institute. It is expected that fellows will make use of relevant resources from the collection in their research projects. Research results will be the subject of formal fellow’s discussion and will be presented to the wider public at regular intervals. At the end of their stay, fellows are required to submit a research paper which will be peer-reviewed and published in VWI‘s e-journal S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation.

Research fellowships are awarded for a duration of between six and eleven months. They will have a work station with computer and internet access and will receive a monthly stipend of € 2,200. In addition, VWI will cover housing costs during the fellowship (up to € 700) as well as the costs of a round-trip to and from Vienna (coach class airfare or 2nd class train fare). There is an additional one-off payment of € 500 available for research conducted outside of Vienna or photocopying costs outside of the institute, where applicable.

Research fellows will be selected by the International Academic Advisory Board of the VWI.

Applications may be submitted in English or German and must include the following documents:

• completed application form,
• a detailed description of the research project, including the research objectives, an overview of existing research on the topic and methodology (12,000 characters max.)
• a list of publications and a CV with a photo, if not already included in application form (optional)

Please send your application in electronic format (if possible in one integral *.pdf-file) with the subject header "VWI Research Fellowships 2018/2019" by 31 January, 2018 to: 

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

If you do not get confirmation that we have received your proposal, please contact us.

Future research fellows are advised to endeavour to finance a part of their fellowship via a stipend from the Stipendienstiftung der Republik Österreich and to submit an application to this end after they have received notification of being awarded their fellowship.

Research Fellowships 2019/2020 at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI)

The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) invites applications for its research fellowships for the academic year 2019/2020.

The VWI is an academic institution dedicated to the research and documentation of antisemitism, racism, nationalism and the Holocaust. Conceived and established during Simon Wiesenthal’s lifetime, the VWI receives funding from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, the Federal Chancellery as well as the City of Vienna. Research at the institute focuses on the Holocaust in its European context, including its antecedents and its aftermath.

Scholars who have completed their Ph.D. studies and have produced works of scholarship are eligible for receiving a research fellowship. Research fellows will be able to conduct research on a topic of their choice in the field of Holocaust studies at the institute. Beyond the research work itself, the stay at the institute is intended to encourage communication and scientific exchange among the fellows at the institute. Research fellows are expected to support the institute's academic work and provide research adjective and support to Junior fellows. Research fellows must be regularly present at the VWI.

Research projects are to focus on a topic relevant to the research interests of the VWI. Within this parameter, applicants are free to choose their own topic, approach and methodology. Fellows will have access to the archives of the institute. It is expected that fellows will make use of relevant resources from the collection in their research projects. Research results will be the subject of formal fellow’s discussion and will be presented to the wider public at regular intervals. At the end of their stay, fellows are required to submit a research paper which will be peer-reviewed and published in VWI‘s e-journal S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation.

Research fellowships are awarded for a duration of between six and eleven months. They will have a work station with computer and internet access and will receive a monthly stipend of € 2,200. In addition, VWI will cover housing costs during the fellowship (up to € 700) as well as the costs of a round-trip to and from Vienna (coach class airfare or 2nd class train fare). There is an additional one-off payment of € 500 available for research conducted outside of Vienna or photocopying costs outside of the institute, where applicable.
Research fellows will be selected by the International Academic Advisory Board of the VWI.

Applications may be submitted in English or German and must include the following documents:

• completed application form,
• a detailed description of the research project, including the research objectives, an overview of existing research on the topic and methodology (12,000 characters max.)
• a list of publications and a CV with a photo, if not already included in application form (optional)

Please send your application in electronic format (in one integral *.pdf-file) with the subject header “VWI Research Fellowships 2019/2020” by 13 January 2019 to:

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

If you do not get confirmation that we have received your proposal, please contact us.

Future research fellows are advised to endeavour to finance a part of their fellowship via a stipend from the Stipendienstiftung der Republik Österreich and to submit an application to this end after they have received notification of being awarded their fellowship.