Dr. Yaacov Falkov

Professional Background

Dr. Yaacov Falkov is currently visiting lecturer at Tel Aviv University and the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Israel. He holds a PhD in history, and a MA in security and diplomacy from Tel Aviv University (Israel). As the Phyllis Greenberg Heideman and Richard D. Heideman Fellow, at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Dr. Falkov will be conducting research for his project, “What Did the Kremlin Know About the Holocaust? The Soviet Security Service’s (NKVD) Reporting on the Fate of the Jews in the German-Occupied Territories, 1941-1944.”

Dr. Falkov is fluent in Hebrew, Russian, and English. He has reading abilities in German as well as Latvian, Polish and other Eastern European languages.

Dr. Falkov is the author of the monograph Forest Spies. The Intelligence Activity of the Soviet Partisans (The Hebrew University Magnes Press and the Yad Vashem Press, 2017), as well as of several articles including “To Set the Fascist’s Rear Ablaze: The Input of Guerrilla Warfare in the Soviet Military Effort, 1941-1945”, in Maarachot (2012) and “Partisans Sovétiques” in Encyclopédye de la Seconde guerre mondiale (2015). He currently has a book in progress entitled Russian-German Intelligence and Counterintelligence Struggle in the Nazi-Occupied Soviet Territories. Dr. Falkov has also presented at several lectures and conferences.

In 2015, Dr. Falkov presented “’Jews as a Nation are Exterminated, as Everywhere Else’: The Murder of the USSR Jews as Reflected in Intelligence Reports Submitted by Soviet Partisans,” at Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Institute. The following year he presented “Preventing Evil: Volunteers from Palestine in the Spanish Civil War” at the International Historical Workshop arranged by Oxford University, Belgrade. He has also been the recipient of several fellowships and awards throughout his career.

Fellowship Research

While in residence at the Mandel Center, Dr. Falkov initiated research on the knowledge of the Soviet intelligence and its political superiors concerning the Holocaust in the German-occupied Soviet territories, during the occupation (1941-1944) and in the years that followed (1945-1950). Drawing on the Museum's resources, he sought to understand to what extent and how exactly the Holocaust issue has been addressed by the reporters of the NKVD, the main Soviet intelligence, and internal security body.

Dr. Falkov was in residence from March 1 to August 31, 2018.