Dr. Havi Dreifuss

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND

Dr. Havi Dreifuss is associate professor in Jewish history at Tel Aviv University (Israel). She earned her doctorate in history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2005. She has language skills in Hebrew, English, Polish, Yiddish, and German. While in residence at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Professor Dreifuss conducted research on her project, “Religious Life during the Holocaust / The Beginning of the End.” 

Professor Dreifuss is an accomplished scholar whose numerous publications include: “אנו יהודי פולין”? היחסים בין יהודים לפולנים בתקופת השואה” ["We Polish Jews"? Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust] (Yad Vashem, 2009); Changing Perspectives on Polish-Jewish Relations during the Holocaust (Yad Vashem, 2012); and יותר ממוות ומרד: גטו ורשה - הסוף (אפריל 1942 - יוני 1943) [More death and rebellion: Warsaw - end (April 1942 - June 1943)] (Yad Vashem, Forthcoming). She is also an active participant in a number of professional societies, including the Advisory Committee of The Holocaust Restitution Company of Israel and the Advisory Committee of Research and Documentation for The Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (Claims Conference).

FELLOWSHIP RESEARCH

For her Phyllis Greenberg Heideman and Richard D. Heideman Fellowship, Professor Dreifuss focused on the practical world of the religious Jew during the Nazi era by examining Jewish holy days as well as religious competing with specific historical events, birth to burial while checking new and old rituals, and daily rituals and their changing character during the Holocaust. She made use of the Museum's vast German, Jewish and Polish documentation to outline the tremendous changes that have taken place in the lives of Jews as individuals and as a society before the practical implementation of the separation policy (ghettos) and the mass murder of the Jews.

Professor Havi Dreifuss was in residence at the Mandel Center from September 1, 2015 to April 30, 2016.