Laura Jockusch

Albert Abramson Associate Professor of Holocaust Studies

Departments/Programs

History
Near Eastern and Judaic Studies

Degrees

New York University, Ph.D.

Expertise

Modern Jewish History, European History, Holocaust Studies, Genocide Studies

Profile

Prof. Jockusch’s research and teaching focus on the social, political, cultural, and legal histories of European Jews before, during, and after the Holocaust and engage in comparative, transnational, and cross-disciplinary perspectives.

Her first book studied the beginnings of Holocaust research by Jews and from a Jewish perspective immediately after the liberation from Nazi rule. Based on unpublished archival records in various languages, it is the first comparative history of a number of documentation centers and historical commissions that pioneered Holocaust research in the wake of the Second World War. Comparing the cases of France, Poland, Germany, Austria, and Italy, it retrieved from oblivion these first endeavors by Jews across Europe to write the history of the Holocaust and reappraised the earliest attempts to raise research questions and methodological problems that still have relevance for Holocaust and genocide studies today.

Jockusch’s ongoing research project investigates how Jews conceptualized legal redress after the unprecedented crime of the Nazi genocide of European Jews. It explores how Jewish individuals and organizations related to the Nuremberg trials and other Allied war crime trials in occupied Germany, and examines the multifaceted ways in which Jews sought to implement their ideas of justice in and outside of the Allied tribunals. She is also working on a book on the trials of Stella Goldschlag (aka Kuebler-Isaaksohn), a young German Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust because she became a Gestapo informer and was tried three times after the war: for "crimes against humanity" by a Soviet military court in 1946 and two West-German courts in 1957 and 1972 for "accessory to murder". Analyzing the complexities of Goldschlag’s rationalization of her wartime actions, the roles played by Holocaust survivors in bringing her to justice, the legal conceptualizations of her wrongdoing, and the ongoing German public discourse about Goldschlag's case, this project seeks to make original contributions to Holocaust and genocide studies, women’s and gender studies, German history, and the history of transitional justice.

Prior to coming to Brandeis in fall 2016, Jockusch taught at New York University, the University of Leipzig, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the University of Haifa, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Courses Taught

NEJS	37a	The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry
NEJS	132b	Against the Apocalypse: Jewish Responses to the Holocaust
NEJS	136b	Revenge, Justice, and Reconciliation: Mass Atrocity Trials in the Long Shadow of Nazi Crimes
NEJS	138a	Genocide and Mass Killing in the Twentieth Century
NEJS	148a	Inside Nazi Germany: Social and Political History of the Third Reich
NEJS	150a	The Jews in Weimar and Nazi Germany
NEJS	232a	Research and Archival Methods in Modern Jewish History
NEJS	247b	The Craft of Holocaust Research: Questions, Sources, Interpretations, and Debates

Awards and Honors

Radcliffe Fellowship, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (2019 - 2020)

Mandel Center for the Humanities Grant (2018)

2015 National Jewish Book Awards (Finalist) (2016)

2012 National Jewish Book Award, Holocaust Category (2013)

2013 Sybil Halpern Milton Book Prize, German Studies Association (2013)

Ben and Zelda Cohen Fellowship, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC (2012 - 2013)

Martin Buber Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2012 - 2016)

Feodor-Lynen Minerva Postdoctoral Fellowship, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2010 - 2012)

Gerald Westheimer Career Development Fellowship of the Leo Baeck Institute in New York (2010)

International Institute for Holocaust Research Fellowship, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem (2009)

Kreitman Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva (2008 - 2010)

Dr. Sophie Bookhalter Fellowship in Jewish Culture, Center for Jewish History, New York (2006 - 2007)

Doctoral Fellowship, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, New York (2005 - 2006)

Felix Posen Doctoral Fellowship, Vidaal Sassoon International Center for Research on Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2005 - 2006)

Zeit Foundation Doctoral Fellowship, Bucerius Institute for Research of Contemporary German History and Society, University of Haifa (2005 - 2006)

MacCracken Doctoral Fellowship, Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York University (2001 - 2004)

Scholarship

Jockusch, Laura and Avinoam J. Patt. "Holocaust Survivors Diasporas." Oxford Handbook of Jewish Diasporas. Ed. Hasia Diner. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021 (forthcoming)

Jockusch, Laura, ed. Early Jewish Texts on the Holocaust: The Collections of the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland. Goettingen: Vandenhoeck und Rupprecht, 2021. (forthcoming)

Jockusch, Laura. "Prosecuting ‘Crimes against the Jewish People’: The Eichmann Trial and the History of a Legal Concept." The Trial of Adolf Eichmann: Retrospect and Prospect. Ed. Rebecca Witmann and David Lazar. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021 (forthcoming)

Jockusch, Laura. "Victims of Colonialism and Ethno-Nationalism? The Holocaust, the Nakba, and the Quest for Meaningful Historical Comparisons." Central European History (2021). (forthcoming)

Jockusch, Laura. "Review of Carolyn Dean "The Moral Witness: Trials and Testimony after Genocide (Cornell University Press, 2019)." American Historical Review 2021.

Jockusch, Laura and Elisabeth Gallas. "Anything But Silent: Jewish Responses to the Holocaust in the Aftermath of World War II." A Companion to the Holocaust. Ed. Simone Gigliotti and Hilary Earl. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020. 311-330.

Jockusch, Laura. "Strafverfolgung statt Vergeltung. Zur Rolle des Rechts nach dem Holocaust." Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur. Magazin des Simon Dubnow Instituts 2019: 8-10.

Jockusch, Laura. "Laura Intimate Enemies: Patterns of Interethnic Violence and the Holocaust in Local Perspective." Rev. of Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town called Buczacz, by Omer Bartov. Journal of Genocide Studies vol. 20 of 4 November 2018: 637-644.

Jockusch, Laura. "Sammeln, Aufschreiben, und Erinnern: Historische Dokumentation in den Displaced Persons Lagern in Deutschland." Verbrechen und Aufklärung. Die erste Generation der Holocaust-Forschung. Ed. Stephan Lehnstaedt. Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2019. 184-205.

Jockusch, Laura. "Verraeterin und Femme Fatale? Anmerkungen zum Fall Stella Goldschlag." Jüdischer Almanach: Sex & Crime - Geschichten aus der jüdischen Unterwelt. vol. 2019 Ed. Gisela Dachs. Frankfurt/Main: Surkamp, 2019. 119-125.

Jockusch, Laura. "Premiers chroniqueurs de la Shoah: centres de documentation et commissions historiques juives au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale." Premiers saviors de la Shoah. Ed. Judith Lindenberg. Paris: CNRS Editions, 2017

Jockusch, Laura. "“In Search of Retribution: Nazi Collaborators Trials in Jewish Courts in Postwar Germany”." Revenge, Retribution, Reconciliation: Justice and Emotions between Conflict and Mediation. Ed. Laura Jockusch, Andreas Kraft, Kim Wünschmann. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2017. 127-145.

Jockusch, Laura, Andreas Kraft, Kim Wünschmann, ed. Revenge, Retribution, Reconciliation: Justice and Emotions between Conflict and Mediation. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2016.

Jockusch, Laura, Andreas Kraft, Kim Wünschmann,. "Introduction." Revenge, Retribution, Reconciliation: Justice and Emotions between Conflict and Mediation. Ed. Jockusch, Laura, Andreas Kraft, Kim Wünschmann,. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2016. 12-27.

Jockusch, Laura. "Review of Dan Stone, The Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, New Haven: Yale University Press. 2015. Pp. 277, $ 32.50." German History vol. 34, 2 2016

Jockusch, Laura. "Review of YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation." Rev. of YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation, by Cecile Esther Kuznitz. American Historical Review vol. 121,4 2016: 1381-1382.

Jockusch, Laura. "“Be-mabat rishon: tiud ha-shoah ve-heker ha-shoa be-Europa le-ahar ha-milhama”." Bishvil ha-zikaron (November 2016): 30-39.

Jockusch, Laura. "“Early Chroniclers of the Holocaust: Jewish Historical Commissions and Documentation Centers in the Aftermath of the Holocaust”." Before the Holocaust Had Its Name. Ed. Fritz, Regina et al.. Vienna: New Academic Press, 2016. 23-44.

Jockusch, Laura and Gabriel N. Finder, ed. Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel after the Holocaust. Detroit: Wayne State University Press in Association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2015.

Jockusch, Laura. Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe. Paperback ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Jockusch, Laura. "Historiography in Transit: Survivor Historians and the Writing of Holocaust History in the late 1940s." Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook LVIII. (2014): 75-94.

Jockusch, Laura. "Review of Rebecca Clifford, Commemorating the Holocaust: The Dilemmas of Remembrance in France and Italy. (Oxford Historical Monographs.) New York: Oxford University Press. 2013. Pp. x, 292. $125.00." American Historical Review vol. 119, 5 2014: 1787-1788.

Jockusch, Laura. "Chronisten der Zerstörung: Jüdische Historische Kommissionen und Dokumentationszentren und die Anfänge der Holocaustforschung im Nachkriegseuropa." Jahrbuch des International Tracing Service 2. (2013): 152-172.

Jockusch, Laura. "Ein Anwalt der Opfer? Der Jüdische Weltkongress und das Problem jüdischer Interessenvertretung bei den Nürnberger Prozessen." Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 22. (2013): 13-34.

Jockusch, Laura. "Justice at Nuremberg? Jewish Responses to Nazi War-Crime Trials in Allied-Occupied Germany." Jewish Social Studies 19. 1 (2013): 107-147.

Pendas, Devin O., Jockusch, and Gabriel Finder. "Auschwitz Trials: The Jewish Dimension." Yad Vashem Studies 41. 2 (2013): 139-171.

Jockusch, Laura. Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe. Hardcover Edition ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Jockusch, Laura and Tamar Lewinsky. "Paradise Lost? Postwar Memory of Polish Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 24. 3 (2010): 373-399.