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Dr. Joshua Zimmerman

Research Fellow of the Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance
"The Wounds of History: The Polish Resistance and the Holocaust"

Professional Background

Joshua Zimmerman is Associate Professor of History at Yeshiva University in New York. He received a PhD in comparative history from Brandeis University, an MA in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA in history from the University of California at Santa Cruz. For his Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance Research Fellowship, he conducted research for his project “The Wounds of History: The Polish Resistance and the Holocaust.”

Dr. Zimmerman is the author of Poles, Jews and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892–1914 (2004) and editor of two volumes: Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945 (2005), and Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and its Aftermath (2003). He is the recipient of a Skirball Visiting Fellowship at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Oxford University, a Fulbright Grant at Warsaw University, and an Aleksander and Alicja Hertz Memorial Fellowship at Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, among others. His research languages are Yiddish, Polish, Hebrew, Russian, and French.

Fellowship Research

During his tenure at the Center, Dr. Zimmerman conducted research for his forthcoming manuscript, “The Wounds of History: The Polish Resistance and the Holocaust,” which examines the behavior and attitude of the Polish Home Army (AK) toward the Jews during the Holocaust. He utilized various archival collections at the Museum, including Holocaust survivor testimonies from the Shoah Foundation Visual Archive and the Museum’s vast microfilm collections from Poland.

Dr. Zimmerman was in residence at the Mandel Center from August 1, 2011 to April 30, 2012.