Eight Small Research Grant Programme (SRGP) grants were awarded in Winter 2024. Reports for these will be added below as they are received:
Galyna Kutsovska: Life and Death of Jews in Kharkiv Oblast: Jewish Experiences and Responses to the Holocaust
Mirah Langer: ‘Between the Drowned and the Saved’: The representation and role of children and grandchildren of Jewish Holocaust survivors in public commemorative practice
Dmytro Moisielev: Medieval Jews of Chersonesos: archaeological and historical context of community life
Katharina Wendl: Jewish Women writing on Jewish tradition and practice in early 20th-century German Neo-Orthodoxy and today
Galyna Kutsovska
Life and Death of Jews in Kharkiv Oblast: Jewish Experiences and Responses to the Holocaust
In June 2025, I conducted a two-week research trip to Berlin, where I visited the Bundesarchiv archives and its library. The EAJS research grant enabled me to undertake this important work and gain access to necessary research materials. Accessing the archival collections at the Bundesarchiv significantly enhanced my doctoral project, particularly as prior studies on Holocaust and World War II history in Ukraine underscored specific collections pertinent to my investigation. I am deeply grateful for this opportunity, as I believe that the research grant provided invaluable support for my doctoral dissertation, enhancing both the quality and depth of my work.
Below, I will briefly outline my doctoral project, the objectives of the research trip, and summarize the goals, findings, and key highlights of my visit to Berlin that contributed to the development of my doctoral thesis and academic book.
This dissertation explores Jewish responses and survival strategies during the Nazi persecution in the Kharkiv Oblast of Soviet Ukraine from 1941 to 1943. The primary purpose is to analyze various factors that contributed to Jewish survival, including social and cultural integration, assimilative practices, prior knowledge, linguistic abilities, and religious affiliation. The study also examines the role of social interactions, Jewish and non-Jewish networks, and intermarriages in survival. Focusing on Jewish experiences through the lenses of Jewish and intermarried families, women, and children, the thesis studies adaptive strategies, coping mechanisms, agency, resilience, and “choiceless choices” of Jews. The project delves into various Jewish responses developed during different stages of persecution, including hiding, passing, camouflaging, evading, escaping, and resisting. This research provides a framework for exploring complex themes of family dynamics during war and crisis, interracial relationships, and the evolution of identities at the intersection of race, gender, and age. Gender and age are considered separate analytical categories, arguing that both significantly affect Jewish survival patterns and experiences. As a multicultural borderland region, Kharkiv’s distinctive sociocultural features illuminate geography-based nuances of Jewish survival and enhance our understanding of how genocide was orchestrated in a large urban setting. Prior to German occupation, Jews comprised almost 20% of the population in Kharkiv and were the largest ethnic group after Ukrainians and Russians. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, most Kharkiv residents were evacuated, while men were mobilized into the Soviet Army or joined partisan groups. As a result, women and children primarily stayed in the region, which is the focus of the present study’s analysis.
The project draws upon archival source material created between the 1940s and 1990s, primarily in Ukrainian, Russian, German, Polish, Hebrew, and English languages. This includes documentation produced by the German and collaborating authorities during the occupation of Kharkiv, population census lists, German military activity reports, Extraordinary State Commission to Investigate German-Fascist Crimes Committed on Soviet Territory (ChGK), and Red Army reports, postwar Soviet and German trial records, as well as testimonies, interviews (oral history) and ego documents produced by Jews and non-Jews. The source material is stored in archives in Ukraine, Russia, the United States, Israel, and Germany. A large part of the archival material was accessed through various travel grants and research fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the Yad Vashem archives in Israel, and the Bundesarchiv Militärarchiv in Freiburg. The last major archival collections for this thesis are stored at the Bundesarchiv Federal Archives in Berlin-Lichterfelde, where most of the materials are not digitized or available online and require in-person access.
In the Bundesarchiv archives I accessed archival files from the following collections:
R 94 Reichskommissar für die Ukraine
R 6 Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete
R 70-Sowjetunion Deutsche Polizeidienststellen in der Sowjetunion
R 58 Reichssicherheitshauptamt
R 20 Truppen und Schulen der Ordnungspolizei / Chef der Bandenkampfverbände
These collections include guidelines, orders, and directives of the Soviet military administration, as well as documents on the organization and management of the occupied eastern territories. They also contain activity reports, general situation reports, operational orders, and instructions for Einsatzgruppen regarding the treatment of Jews, as well as records from individual offices and units in the occupied territories. Additionally, various Soviet event reports compiled by the German Einsatzgruppen and other SS units document operations in the Soviet Union during World War II. These reports feature testimonies and accounts of the Jewish situation during the occupation, as well as activity and situation reports of the Security Police and SD in the USSR, and administrative plans for organizing and managing the occupied eastern territories, including Kharkiv. Notably, among the many highlights in the accessed files are Soviet event reports from collection R 58, which contain German reports on the treatment of Jews and the Jewish situation in the Kharkiv region; and files from collection R 6, which include orders and decrees defining the term “Jew” in the occupied eastern territories, addressing the treatment of mixed Jews, and outlining the division of the Kharkiv district.
Furthermore, during my visit to the Bundesarchiv branch in Berlin, I was able to review some postwar trial documents from the 1960s that are part of the collection B162 at the Bundesarchiv in Ludwigsburg. These documents have been digitized but are only accessible on-site at the Bundesarchiv branches. The reviewed trials relate to crimes committed against Jews and related to Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution), other civilians, and Soviet POWs. Several investigations into Nazi violent crimes involving the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police), the Schutzpolizei (Protection Police), and the Feldgendarmerie also took place. These included inquiries into the murders and ghettoization of Jews, the organization of the genocide, and the shootings of Jews in Kharkov. Additionally, there were investigations related to the use of gas vans in the killings of Jews and Soviet POWs in early 1942 in Kharkiv. Other aspects included actions by local SS and police offices, interrogations of police commanders in Kharkov and elsewhere, investigations of forced labor and subsequent shootings of Jews near the village of Berezhne, and an investigation into the clandestine relationship of a member of the Police Battalion with a Kharkiv woman, who was later killed, despite the ban on relationships with Soviet women.
In summary, I am very grateful for the opportunity provided by the EAJS research grant, as it greatly supports my doctoral dissertation and advances my research and scholarship.
Mirah Langer
‘Between the Drowned and the Saved’: The representation and role of children and grandchildren of Jewish Holocaust survivors in public commemorative practice
It is through the generous support of the European Association for Jewish Studies that I was able to significantly expand and refine my doctoral research. My project investigates how the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors from German-speaking Europe are represented in public commemorative practice. The key component of my research has been conducting museum studies in the countries linked to survivors’ experiences before, during and after the war. This involves visiting Jewish and Holocaust museums in locations tracing the survivors’ pathways from their original homelands to sites of deportation and murder of their families and, then to the countries where they most frequently settled. Until now, for the last category, due to budgetary constraints I was able to include only the USA and Israel; the absence of UK material had left a crucial gap. This was particularly problematic because of the unique form of the UK-based Kindertransport survival experience. With your support, I was able to conduct fieldwork in London, Nottinghamshire, and Prague—three sites that together provide new clarity to my model of generational transmission for this cohort of Jewish survivor families.
London: Imperial War Museum
My research began in London at the Imperial War Museum’s Holocaust Galleries. Here, I documented the museum’s unique approach to representing the children and grandchildren. The IWM’s decision to end their exhibition with a documentary focused on immediate descendants of survivors is unprecedent in the dozens of other sites I have visited. The IWM’s documentary includes interviews containing the deeply intimate reflections on life growing up after war by the descendants and what these ‘witnesses-to-the-witness’ observed about how the survivors carried and/or held the past into the present. The fact this plays in the same institutional space as representations and material culture linked to their survivor parent/grandparents makes this a remarkable example of generational transmission crossing between the private and public realms.
London: Wiener Holocaust Library
Also in London, I was able to visit the Wiener Holocaust Library, one of the world’s most important repositories for Holocaust documentation. A pivotal element of this visit was tracing the origins of the She’erit Hapletah (surviving remnant)’s visual icon. This is of a tree cut off from its roots, yet sprouting new leaves. It appears extensively in Displaced Camp and immediate post-war materials but until now I have not been able to find out where it originated. With the support of a librarian at the Library, I pursued several promising leads. These included the likelihood of identifying a possible artist and mapping further archival routes for its provenance. The significance of this discovery is twofold. First, it strengthens the symbolic dimension of my generational model, where visual motifs act as carriers of memory. Second, it opens the possibility of a separate publication beyond my PhD, devoted entirely to the history and function of this symbol.
National Holocaust Centre and Museum, Nottinghamshire
From London I travelled to Laxton, Nottinghamshire, home of the National Holocaust Centre and Museum. This site was Britain’s first purpose-built Holocaust institution, heavily survivor-led and as such crucial to include for cogency and academic integrity of my sample selection. The memorial garden filled within individual message plaques was particularly notable for how intimate stories of familial remembrance frame the broader exhibition narrative. Other representational patterns observed across museums in other countries were also now confirmed as having travelled to UK-based museum Holocaust narratives as well.
Prague: Jerusalem Synagogue Museum
Finally, I travelled to Prague, where I was able to return to a museum, which I had previously discovered by chance on a journey back from Terezín (Theresienstadt). This was the Jerusalem Synagogue’s permanent exhibitions which includes one on the Post-45 Jewish Community. During my original, visit I had noticed a particularly striking photo of a baby being posed atop a grave captioned “’Loved ones murdered during the war remained part of the family”. However, at the time of this surprise discovery, I could not document the museum any further. On this return visit, I conducted a complete case study. This is critical as this photograph unlocks a critical area of discovery that complicates the narrative of “silence” that is often said to dominate survivor families. I was able to uncover that this photograph reflects an intense, short-lived phenomenon whereby survivor parents took their children – only when they were infants and toddlers and therefore too young to understand – to sites of mass graves and killings. This phenomenon reveals an early, embodied practice of transmission: an attempt to connect the youngest descendants directly with the dead, creating a liminal role for them between ‘the drowned and the saved’ as such.
Research Significance
The possibility to have the time and resources to be able to visit and include these sites within my larger research has proved invaluable:
- I can now offer full geographical cohesion in my museum sample, spanning Israel, the United States, Britain, and Central and Western Europe. This provides a coherent picture of how German-speaking Jewish families displaced by the Holocaust carried and transformed memory into commemoration across borders.
- Each site also offers unique forms of memory practices in terms of how they convey their narratives, both in terms of content and design. To be able to apply a comparative lens deeply enriches my final analysis. This also means I am constantly able to sharpen the theoretical findings around post-Holocaust Jewish generations.
- Furthermore, new scholarly horizons are offered in facets of the research that have not yet widely been explored. This includes the iconography of the She’erit Hapletah and the phenomenon of the survivor’s ritualistic bridging of the worlds of the dead and the descendants during the rawness of the immediate post-war era.
Once again, my deepest gratitude for the opportunities enabled through the Small Research Grant Programme. I am excited to share the upcoming output of my research which suggests that within the cohort of Jewish survivor families, the continuous generational rhythm often imagined as ‘L’Dor v’Dor’ (from generation to generation) is in fact, a far more discontinuous and staccato composition.
Dmytro Moisielev
Medieval Jews of Chersonesos: archaeological and historical context of community life
The aim of my scientific trip to the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań was to study the history of the Jewish community of Chersonesos (Crimea) in the Late Byzantine and Golden Horde periods by archaeological and historical (narrative) sources.
Jewish community of byzantine Chersonesos was previously unknown. There were no authentic written sources about it. Its existence was confirmed only by archaeological data in 2018. Archaeological sources showed that Chersonesos Jews owned the only tile production workshop of the city. Also, we know that Chersonesos Jews were deeply Hellenized, used writing Greek in everyday life and Greek and Latin names.
The history of Chersonesos in the Late Byzantine and Golden Horde periods is characterized by the last rise of the city and next deep urban crisis and its abandoning. Thus, the entire 14th and 15th centuries are the time of emigration of the population from Chersonesos. For the Christians this phenomenon has been proved by archaeological excavations in the Partenit region (Southern coast of Crimea). The same process should have been for the Jewish community too. Consequently, the direction and time of migrations can be recorded by discovering of usage of Greek names among the other Jewish communities. Successfulness of this methodology was showed by the find of Greek names on the earliest tombs of Karaite necropolis of Mangup. Historical sources confirm this migration by the information of the relocation of Chersonesos ruler Isaak Theodoro to Mangup in the same time. The context of Golden Horde times in Crimea, especially the military campaigns of Vitautas the Great in the end of the 14th century, causes the search of Jewish migration from Chersonesos not only within the Crimea but in Lithuania too.
During my scientific trip to Poznań, I had the opportunity to examine the documents that stored in the archive and libraries of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. I processed the archaeological documentation (photos, drawings, inventories) from the excavations of Chersonesos in 2004-2013 in the Archive of the Centrum “Ekspedycja Novae” and found the collection of 464 roof tiles from Jewish tile production workshop: 56 roof tiles had relief marks with inscriptions of 11 Jewish artisans’ names.
In addition, I visited two libraries of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. I examined court records from Lithuanian Metrica of the 15th-16th centuries; karaim community documents from Trakai (Lithuania) of the 16th-17th centuries; 11 chronicles and annals about the military campaign of Vitautas the Great against Golden Horde and Tamerlane in 1397-1399; 6 monographs and special historical studies with the critical analysis of these campaigns.
Thanks to the fellowship from the EAJS I made fundamental progress in the implementation of the project of the study of the history of the Jewish community of Chersonesos. I collected the necessary material for writing the article “Late Byzantine Jewish community of Chersonesos” and have already begun to work on it.
The research in the archive allowed to achieve the main aim of the project – compiling a list of names of Jewish tile-makers from Chersonesos. The list consists of 11 names: Erkah (?), Filoksen (?), Geor (George?), Kamilo, Kiriak (?), Makarios, Neos, Noeh, Niko (Nikolas?), Rupsus, Touritor Amniaksi. However, the most interesting and important name for the aims of the project is “Touritor Amniaksi”. The second part of artisan`s name mentioned the Amniako region. The Jewish community of Amniako was found in the Karaite postscript to the letter of Elijah from Salonica, 11th century (Mann, I, 48-59).
The study of the Lithuanian Metrica in the Library of Collegium Historicum made it possible to compile two Trakai Karaites names lists of the 15th-16th centuries and of the 17th century. In addition, the list of Lithuanian Jews names (both Karaites and Rabbanites) mentioned in the Metrics was compiled. The Trakai Karaites list of the 15th-16th centuries consists of 53 names. Three of them have Greek origin (Agron, Kosim, Manuil) and one is Latin (Mark). The only match with the Chersonesos names list is the Biblical name “Noeh”. However, the Lithuanian Jews list has some interesting names. Firstly, it is name “Nikos” (1442, resident of Medinikai region, his Jewish origin is possible but unconfirmed) that has the match in the Chersonesos names list in form of “Niko”. Another name is patronym “Kershon” (1564, Novogrudok) – it could be a variant of the Crimean Karaite name “Karsun” (person from Chersonesos). The list of the Trakai Karaites names of the 17th century hasn’t any Greek names.
The work in the libraries of the University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznań has given the opportunity to study the materials about the Golden Horde campaigns of Vitautas the Great in 1397-1399. This works allowed to clarify the time of Vitautas’s Crimean campaign in 1398 and to localize the operational base of Lithuanian army (“St. John castle in the area of Tamana”) in the Chersonesos region. The area of Tamana located between the Akhtiar Bay and Belbek river. Our interpretation proves by evidences about the compact residence of the Jewish population there in the court records of Crimean khanate, Osman tax revisions and chronic about Cossack’s military of the 17 century.
With the new historical data about the Vitautas the Great`s military actions in the Chersonesos region the revision of the archaeological sites in this area was made. As a result, military burial of the campaign of 1398 was found. Archaeological site is the collective grave of near 60 raiders. They were defeated and executed by the decapitation on the edge of the 14-15 centuries by c14 dating. The military unit had a specific ethnic composition by DNA analysis: Ruthenias, residents of Western Europe, Golden Horde warriors and persons with probable Jewish origin.
As a result, the fellowship from the EAJS made it possible: to discover another independent undoubted proof of the presence of Jewish community in Chersonesos; to investigate the possibilities and background of connections between Chersonesos Jews and Vitautas the Great in Crimea.
Katharina Wendl
Jewish Women writing on Jewish tradition and practice in early 20th-century German Neo-Orthodoxy and today
Introduction
I generously received a stipend from EAJS to visit Bar Ilan University (Raanana, Israel) and the National Library of Israel (Jerusalem) in order to access primary sources about women in German Neo-Orthodoxy and women’s engagement in writing on Jewish tradition and practice. Visits to these libraries and archives took place between August 3rd and August 13th, 2025.
Visited institutions
Bar Ilan University Library is a significant resource for researchers in the field of Jewish Studies who want to explore the history of Jewish law, historical Jewish education, traditional Jewish biblical interpretation, and rabbinic literature. The library has hundreds of books, documents and manuscripts related to the history of German-Jewish communities, especially Neo-Orthodoxy. One of its special collections, the Sänger Collection, holds central documents about the life and work of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the founder and visionary of Neo-Orthodox Judaism, as well as some of his children and grandchildren.
The National Library of Israel is a cornerstone for Jewish Studies research, holding over five million volumes. It collects, digitises and makes accessible vast numbers of publications on topics related to Judaism and the Jewish people. By way of systematic acquisition, restitution efforts, and donations to the library, it has built up a sizeable collection of literature, among others about Jewish women’s involvement in writing and publishing about issues closely related to Judaism in modernity. Some of its holdings pertain to the role of women in German Neo-Orthodoxy and women’s engagement in writing on Jewish practice and tradition, both historical and contemporary.
Aims
The aim of this trip was to survey primary and secondary literature that is only available at Bar Ilan University Library, Bar Ilan University’s Sänger Collection, and the National Library of Israel. The trip was also undertaken to establish connections with faculty at Bar Ilan University responsible for the Sänger Collection, which has been difficult to access for some time. Additionally, key documents held by this collection and at the National Library of Israel were to be identified and investigated in order to further the understanding of Neo-Orthodoxy’s political, cultural, educational, and intracommunal standing in the early 20th century, which, to date, has been under-researched. These visits to libraries and archives are part of a wider project on Jewish women’s religious writings in the 20th and 21st centuries, in particular women’s written engagement with Jewish practice and tradition.
Research activities
At Bar Ilan University Library, I consulted books and writings by Neo-Orthodox female writers as well as other primary and secondary literature pertaining to Jewish women’s role within Neo-Orthodoxy and Jewish education. I also had the opportunity to compare different versions and translations of Rabbi Hirsch’s Collected Writings and the different forewords, which mention women’s involvement in the compilation and editing of the texts to varying degrees.
The Bar Ilan University also houses the Sänger Collection, which contains private correspondence, publications, as well as other documents related to Rabbi Hirsch and the wider Neo-Orthodox movement. The collection includes printed as well as handwritten matters in a variety of languages, most of them in German, Judendeutsch, and Hebrew, which are highly relevant to my research project. The collection not only tells the story of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, but that of Neo-Orthodoxy in both the 19th and early 20th century, providing valuable insights into the role of women within Neo-Orthodoxy and the political, educational, and religious debates within this separatist Jewish movement in the early 20th century. It is these latter documents – not directly connected to Rabbi Hirsch, but created in its ideological environment – that were particularly insightful to me.
Especially interesting for me were the collection’s holdings pertaining to Jewish women’s education and publishing. Visiting the Sänger Collection, I was able to consult central documents pertaining to the wider history of Neo-Orthodoxy in the early 20th century and the role of women in Neo-Orthodoxy, e.g., copies of the Jüdische Monatshefte and newsletters of the Free Association for the Interests of Orthodox Jewry, to which women occasionally contributed. Some documents shed light on the biography of women engaged in Neo-Orthodox writing and publishing, allowing me more insight into the relationship between them. I also had the opportunity to discuss my project with Prof. Adam Ferziger, who holds the Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Chair and gave me helpful advice in further developing my research.
At the National Library of Israel, I consulted primary and secondary literature pertaining to Jewish women’s roles within Neo-Orthodoxy and Jewish education. I delved into contemporary literature by Jewish women writing about Jewish law and practice, perusing the National Library’s vast collection of recent religious literature in Hebrew and other languages, such as Yiddish, German, Spanish, French and Judeo-Arabic. I also had the opportunity to investigate handbooks and guides on Jewish law for women that were published in the 19th century, which are part of its holdings.
While in Israel, I also managed to contact descendants of Rabbi Hirsch in Israel, whose female predecessors had been involved in Neo-Orthodox publishing and writing in the early 20th century. Gaining additional information about Neo-Orthodox women involved in writing and publishing in the early 20th century proved helpful in understanding the mechanisms of the gradual oblivion of their memory and work. Conversations with them also helped frame their activities within the wider history of Neo-Orthodoxy.
Conclusion
The stipend received from EAJS allowed me to visit three archives and libraries in Israel with unique and central collections pertaining to the history of halacha, women’s role in writing and publishing, as well as women’s role within Jewish law and practice. The research trip allowed me to access me with previously unexplored and inaccessible sources and gave me new insights about Neo-Orthodox writings by women and contemporary halakhic literature written by women.
The research trip to Israel, so generously funded by the EAJS, contributed significantly to my understanding of women’s role in Neo-Orthodoxy and widened my knowledge of and familiarity with more recent publications on Jewish law, written for women and also increasingly edited and written by women. These insights will be incorporated into forthcoming publications and ongoing research on this topic.