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Dr. Susanne Heim

Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellow
"The Forced Emigration of Jews from Germany, 1933-1941, and the International Refugee Policy"

Professional Background

Dr. Susanne Heim received a Ph.D. in political science at the Free University if Berlin and an M.A. in political science from the University of Hamburg. During her fellowship at the Museum, she was Deputy Research Director at the Max Planck Society, Presidential Commission. For her Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship for Archival Research, she conducted research for her project “The Forced Emigration of Jews from Germany, 1933-1941, and the International Refugee Policy.”

Dr. Heim has published extensively on the history of the Holocaust, exploring subjects such as German Jewish emigration from Nazi Germany, the confiscation of Jewish property during the Holocaust, the Klemperer diaries, Nazi technocrats as planners of the “Final Solution,” the Generalplan Ost and the Holocaust, and on German scientists and the Nazi quest for autarky in the eastern occupied territories. Her doctoral thesis focused on German economic and population policies in Nazi occupied Poland. Dr. Heim is co-author with Goetz Aly, 2002-2003 J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, of Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die deutsche Plaene fuer eine neue europaeische Ordnung (Fischer, 1991), which was published in English as Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction (Princeton University Press, 2003). Dr. Heim’s research has been supported by several major foundations and institutions including Yad Vashem and the Hans-Boeckler Foundation, which funded her work at the former Special Archive in Moscow.

Fellowship Research

During her tenure at the Museum, Dr. Heim researched and wrote about the history of international responses to Nazi emigration policy and forced expulsion of Jews. Dr. Heim discovered that the German policy of forced emigration initiated a chain reaction of “closed doors” in the potential countries of refuge. It was during the Nazi era that many countries defined immigration policies still operative today. She utilized the Museum’s collections of German administrative records on emigration, letters of Jewish emigrants, and files about the Rublee Committee, among other written documents. She also conducted oral histories with survivors who immigrated to the United States, and explored collections at the National Archives, U.S. Department of State, and records of the Intergovernmental Committee on refugee policy and other recently declassified documents.

Dr. Heim was in residence at the Mandel Center from January 1 to September 1, 2003.