Debórah Dwork

Debórah Dwork, B.A., M.P.H., Ph.D., is an American historian. She is the Rose Professor of Holocaust History and Director of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in the Department of History, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts. Dwork is the daughter of mathematician Bernard Dwork.

Education

Dwork earned a B.A. from Princeton University, an M.P.H. from Yale University, and a Ph.D. from University College London. Prior to holding the Rose Professorship, she was an Associate Professor at the Yale University Child Study Center. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, she has held fellowships, most notably, from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Early Studies

Dwork's early scholarship established her as a social historian who pioneered the use of oral history and primary documents as complementary, mutually enriching sources. A scholar of Public Health, she published a study of immigrant Jews in New York in the period 1880–1914. At the same time, she began to focus on the history of childhood. In her first book, War is Good for Babies and Other Young Children (1987), Dwork examined questions about family, the role of women, and the concept of children's rights in the context of the development of the modern welfare system.

Children-centered History

In Children With A Star (1991), Dwork writes about the children of the Holocaust, focusing on the daily lives of those young people caught in the net of Nazism. The book became the subject of a documentary of the same name by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Holocaust Research

Auschwitz (1996), co-authored with Robert Jan van Pelt, established the context in which historians now view that annihilation camp.^{[citation needed]} The BBC and PBS produced the Horizon/Nova television documentary "Blueprints of Genocide" (BBC) / "Nazi Designers of Death" (PBS) based upon Auschwitz. The book received the National Jewish Book Award and the Spiro Kostof Award.

In 2002, Dwork and van Pelt collaborated again on Holocaust: A History. In it, they consider the place of the Holocaust in the history of the western world, from the Middle Ages to the middle of the twentieth century. Holocaust explores how the different occupation regimes shaped the local populations' ability to respond to the genocide.

In Flight from the Reich (2009), Dwork and van Pelt consider the dilemmas democratic governments faced when presented with the prospect of mass expulsions of Jews from Central European countries. The book focuses on four turning points (1933; 1938–39; 1942; 1946) and offers multiple lenses on each of these periods.

Public Presence

Dwork is the founding Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. The center is dedicated to teaching, research, and public service, offering seventeen professors teaching thirty-eight courses. The Center hosted an international graduate students' conference in Holocaust and Genocide Studies in April 2009.

Dwork's book Voices and Views: A History of the Holocaust is an edited, annotated, and illustrated collection used by the national Holocaust education program of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, as well as for a number of local teacher education programs throughout the country and high school courses on Holocaust history.^{[citation needed]}

Debórah Dwork lectures at academic conferences, philanthropic organizations and the general public. Her books have been translated into Czech, Dutch, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese. She also worked with director Rick Trank in Against the Tide (2008) and Unlikely Heroes (2003), and has contributed to television documentaries including Hiding in Plain Sight (CBS, 2009) and Misha Defonseca and her Hoax Memoir, (RTBF, Belgium National TV, 2008).

Dwork is a contributor to The Huffington Post^[1] and a regular contributor of articles to newspapers and magazines.^[2]

Dwork has taken part in the historical debate about Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust and concluded that Pius did not do enough to ease the suffering of Jews during World War II.^[3]

Books

• Dwork, Debórah; van Pelt, Robert (2009). Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933–1946. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 9780393062298.

• Dwork, Debórah; van Pelt, Robert (2003). Holocaust: A History. New York: Norton. ISBN 0393051889.

• Dwork, Debórah; van Pelt, Robert (2008). Auschwitz. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 9780393322910.

• Dwork, Debórah (1991). Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300050542.

• Mulisch, Harry; translated by Naborn, Robert; forward by Dwork, Debóra (2005). Criminal Case 40/61, the Trial of Adolf Eichmann: An Eyewitness Account (Personal Takes). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0812238613.

• Dwork, Debórah (2002). Voices and Views: A History of the Holocaust. New York: Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. ISBN 0970060203.

• Dwork, Debórah (2008). The Terezin Album of Marianka Zadikow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226511863.

• Dwork, Debórah (1987). War Is Good for Babies and Other Young Children: A History of the Infant and Child Welfare Movement in England 1898–1918. London; New York: Tavistock Publications. ISBN 042260660X.

• Dwork, Debórah; van Pelt, Robert (1996). Auschwitz 1270 to the Present. New York: Norton. ISBN 0393039331.

References

1. ^ Debórah Dwork (April 5, 2009). "Surge in Economic Refugees Will Test Community Resources". The Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-dwork/surge-in-economic-refugee_b_183294.html. Retrieved April 1, 2011. 
2. ^ Deborah Dwork (April 19, 2009). "An invitation to speak". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/04/19/an_invitation_to_speak/. Retrieved April 1, 2011. 
3. ^ "ADL: Pius XII did not save Jews in WWII". The Jerusalem Post. December 20, 2009. http://fr.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1261364552728&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull. Retrieved April 1, 2011. 

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