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Dr. Carla Tonini

Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellow
"Zofia Kossak, the Anti-Semite who Saved Polish Jews"

Professional Background

Ms. Carla Tonini received a Ph.D. from the University of Bologna, Italy and an M.A. in history at the University of Florence. During her fellowship at the Museum, she was Adjunct Professor at the University of Bologna. For her Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship for Archival Research, Ms. Tonini conducted research for her project “Zofia Kossak, the Anti-Semite who Saved Polish Jews.”

Ms. Tonini is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and essays on the Holocaust as well as the books Operazione Madagascar. La questione ebraica in Polonia, 1918-1968 [Operation Madagascar: The Jewish Issue in Poland, 1918-1968] (Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria Editrice, 1999) and with Francesco Leoncini Primavera di Praga e dintorni [The Prague Spring and Its Surroundings] (San Domenico di Fiesole: Cultura della Pace 2000). Ms. Tonini has been an adjunct professor of geography at the University of Ferrara, a lecturer in Italian culture at the University of Warsaw, and a fellow at the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Fellowship Research

During her tenure at the Museum, Ms. Tonini studied Jewish-Polish relations in Warsaw by researching the biography of Zofia Kossak, a female Polish writer and the co-founder of the Commission for the Social Aid of Jews known as Zegota. Ms. Tonini conducted research on this organization, Kossak’s role in the rescue of Jews, and Kossak’s fate in post-war Poland. She used the Museum’s archival collections of the Archiwum Akt Nowych in Warsaw, the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, oral histories, memoirs, and diaries, as well as the Museum’s Registry of Holocaust Survivors.

Ms. Tonini was in residence at the Mandel Center from October 1, 2002 to January 31, 2003.