Lucy Dawidowicz

Lucy Dawidowicz (* as Lucy Schildkret on June 16, 1915 in New York City ; † December 5, 1990 there ) was an American historian of the Holocaust .

Dawidowicz grew up as the daughter of secular Jews. She herself first attended a service in a synagogue in Vilnius in 1938. From 1932 to 1936 she studied English literature at Hunter College with a bachelor's degree. She then continued her studies at Columbia University , where she turned to Jewish history under the influence of Jacob Shatsky (1893-1956). From 1938 to August 1939 (shortly before the outbreak of war) she was in Vilnius at the YIVO and learned Yiddish . There she came into close contact with her teachers Zelig Kalmanovich , Max Weinreich and Salman Reisen , of whom only Weinreich survived the Holocaust because he traveled to the USA to set up a branch of the YIVO in New York. She worked for the YIVO branch in New York until 1946 and then traveled to Europe for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to care for Holocaust survivors. In 1947 she returned to the USA and in 1948 married the Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor Szymon Dawidowicz. From 1948 to 1960 she did historical research for the American Jewish Committee . She has also written for newspapers such as the New York Times and the New York Times Book Review . She was a passionate Zionist and anti-communist and campaigned for the right of Jews to emigrate to the Soviet Union . In 1985 she set up a foundation for translation from Yiddish and Hebrew into English.

Her story of the Holocaust The War Against the Jews 1933-1945 from 1975 was a bestseller. She has also published books on Holocaust historiography, Jews in America, essays on Jewish history and identity, and memories.

In 1976 she was a Guggenheim Fellow . She has received several honorary doctorates (including Yeshiva College). In 1978/79 she was a member of the President's Commission on the Holocaust.

Fonts

• with Leon J. Goldstein: Politics In A Pluralist Democracy. Studies of voting in the 1960 election , Institute of Human Relations Press, 1963
• as editor: The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life And Thought In Eastern Europe , Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1967.
  • Reprint 1989, ISBN 0876688520
• The War Against The Jews, 1933–1945 , New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston: 1975 (received the Ainsfeld-Wolf Prize)
  • German: The war against the Jews. 1933-1945 . Kindler Verlag 1979, ISBN 3463007681
  • Tenth Anniversary Edition (1986) with a new foreword (14 pages), paperback, ISBN 0-553-34532-X
• A Holocaust Reader , New York: Behrman House, 1976, ISBN 0874412366
• The Jewish Presence. Essays On Identity And History , New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977
• Spiritual Resistance. Art From Concentration Camps, 1940–1945. A selection of drawings and paintings from the collection of Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot, Israel , with essays by Miriam Novitch, Lucy Dawidowicz, Tom L. Freudenheim, Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1981
• The Holocaust and the Historians , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass: 1981
• On equal terms. Jews in America, 1881-1981 , New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982
• From That Place And Time. A Memoir, 1938–1947 , New York: WW Norton, 1989 (received the Jewish National Book Award)
• What Is The Use Of Jewish history? Essays (editor Neal Kozodoy), New York: Schocken Books, 1992

Web links

• Dawidowicz Papers, American Jewish Historical Society