Professor Dalia Ofer

Professional Background

Professor Dalia Ofer earned a Ph.D. in history and an M.A. and B.A. from The Hebrew University. During her fellowship at the Museum, she was the Max and Rita Haber Professor of Holocaust and East European Studies at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University. For her Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship for Archival Research, Professor Ofer researched “Living Daily: East European Ghettos during the Holocaust: The Individual and the Collective.”

Professor Ofer is the former Academic Head of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She previously served as Head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew university. Professor Ofer’s publications include Derech Baiam, Aliyah Bet Bitkufat Hashoah [Illegal Immigration to Palestine 1939-1944] (1988) which won the 1990 Ben Avi Award; Escaping the Holocaust, Illegal Immigration to the Land of Israel 1939-1942 (1990) which won the Jewish Book Award in 1992; and The Dead-End Journey: The Tragic Story of the Kladovo-Sabac Group (1996) with Hannah Wiener, with Hannah Wiener. She is also the author of numerous articles about the Holocaust, immigration to Palestine and Israel, and the Memory of the Holocaust in Israel. Professor Ofer is the editor of books including Women in the Holocaust, with Lenore B. Weitzman, (1998) and recently published on CD Rom Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historic Encyclopedia with Paula Hyman (2007).

Fellowship Research

While in residence at the Center, Professor Ofer researched the economic issues of ghetto life, primarily how people made a living under the Nazi regulations that deprived them from their assets and occupations, for a manuscript that she is writing. This chapter, as does the rest of the manuscript, concentrates on the individual, the interrelationship between the private and public spheres in the ghetto, and the relationship between different social groups. Other chapters of the study examine the changes and transitions of an individual’s social status in the ghetto, the solidarity and rupture of families, the disadvantaged children of the ghettos, health and public health, and challenges of maintaining the spirit, culture, religion and education within the obtrusive enclosure.

Professor Ofer was in residence at the Mandel Center from March 1 to June 30, 2007.