Alexandra Kramen

Professional Background

Alexandra Kramen is a PhD candidate in history at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Her doctoral research has received support from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the JDC Archives, the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History, the Leo Baeck Institute, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Center for Jewish History, and the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry at Brandeis University.

Her essay “Justice versus Revenge, or Justice as Revenge? A Case Study of Holocaust Testimony,” was recently published in “The Justice Issue” of the Association of Jewish Studies’ biannual AJS Perspectives (Fall 2022). Additionally, she is working with Professors Atina Grossmann and Avinoam J. Patt to co-edit a volume of primary source documents on Jewish displaced persons (DPs) after the Holocaust (publication forthcoming). She uses sources in Yiddish, German, English, and Spanish.

Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Ms. Kramen received her master’s degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from West Chester University, her J.D.from Temple University Beasley School of Law, andbachelor’s degrees in history and political science from Albright College.

Fellowship Research

Alexandra Kramen was awarded a William J. Lowenberg Memorial Fellowship on America, the Holocaust, and the Jews for her research project, “Jewish Survivors’ Struggle for Holocaust Justice in Displaced Persons Camp Föhrenwald and American-Occupied Munich.” Her research explores how DPs living in the longest-running Jewish DP camp in postwar Germany conceived of and acted upon justice for the harms they and their loved ones suffered during the Holocaust. Through thick description and analysis of DPs’ quests in American-occupied Munich, the project serves as a case study of the complex negotiation of justice mechanisms in the aftermath of genocide, speaking to issues of Jewish agency during the Holocaust and its aftermath, and to matters of refugee relief and transitional justice following mass violence more broadly which remain relevant to this day. Over the last five years she has visited numerous archives in Israel, Germany, and the United States, viewing and collecting a variety of sources including survivor oral history testimonies, personal collections, Jewish DP organizational records including the Yiddish press of the DP camps, and the files of international humanitarian aid organizations, American military occupation authorities, local German archives, and the returning Munich Jewish community.

This fellowship affords her access to a trove of personal collections, survivors’ oral history testimonies, written testimonies, memoirs, and other personal documentation, allowing her to highlight the diverse panoply of experiences of so-called “ordinary” DPs, among neither the intellectual elite nor DP leadership, and their everyday interactions in and around Föhrenwald and the greater Munich area. It also allows her to review materials previously accessed only in multiple archives across the globe, the collections of which USHMM holds copies, as she completes the writing process.

Residency Period: October 1, 2023–May 31, 2024