Professor Renee Poznanski

Professional Background

Professor Renee Poznanski earned a Ph.D. and a B.A. in political science from the Institute of Political Science in Paris, and an M.A. and a B.A. in Russian studies from Sorbonne University. During her fellowship at the Museum, Professor Poznanski was the Yaakov and Poria Avnon Professor of Holocaust Studies at Ben Gurion University in Israel. For her Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Fellowship, Professor Poznanski researched “Jewish Resistance in France during World War II.”

A recipient of the Jacob Buchman Prize for the Memory of the Holocaust, Professor Poznanski is the author of Jews in France during World War Two (Brandeis University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, University Press of New England, 2001; first edition in French, Paris: Hachette, 1994; then in Hebrew, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1999) which was a finalist for the 2002 Koret Jewish Book Award in History. For her editorial and translation work on S.M. Dubnov’s Letters on Old and New Judaism (Paris, 1989) Professor Poznanski was awarded the Henri Hertz Prize of the Rectorat of Paris. She has published numerous book chapters and scholarly articles including “On Jews, Frenchmen, Communists and the Second World War” (in Studies in Contemporary Jewry, 2004); “The French Resistance: An Alternative Society for the Jews?” (in Nazi Europe and the Final Solution, 2003); “Jews and non-Jews in France during WWII: A Daily Life Perspective” (in Lessons and Legacies V: The Holocaust and Justice, 2002) and “The Geopolitics of Jewish Resistance in France” (in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2001). In 2003 she participated in the “Jewish Resistance and Jews in National Resistance Movements” workshop sponsored by the Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Fellowship Research

During her fellowship residency, Professor Poznanski completed research on Jewish resistance in France during the Holocaust. Based on an integrative approach between “French” history and “Jewish” history, her study restored the various and diverse forms of resistance practiced by Jews, taking into account Jewish social, cultural, and political integration into French society. Reflecting the pluralism of Jewish identity in the modern age, Professor Poznanski sought to understand Jewish Resistance as a chapter in French Jewish history, reexamining the scope of French Resistance as a whole and its attitude toward antisemitic persecution.

Professor Renee Poznanski was in residence at the Mandel Center from January 17 to October 11, 2006.