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Professor Theodore R. Weeks

Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Fellow
"The End of Jewish Vilna and Kovno, 1939-1944"

Professional Background

Professor Theodore R. Weeks earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkley, and an M.A. and a B.A. in German literature from the University of Colorado, Boulder. During his fellowship at the Museum, he was Associate Professor in the Department of History at Southern Illinois University. For his Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Fellowship, Professor Weeks researched “The End of Jewish Vilna and Kovno, 1939-1944.”

Professor Weeks is the author of Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on Russia’s Western Frontier, 1863-1914 (Northern Illinois University Press, 1996); and From Assimilation to Antisemitism: the “Jewish Question” in Poland, 1850-1914 (Northern Illinois University Press, 2006). He has written numerous scholarly articles relating to nationality, religion, and antisemitism in the Russian Empire and Poland. He is also the translator of articles and book chapters by the German-Jewish sociologist Leo Lowenthal. Professor Weeks is the recipient of prestigious awards and honors including a Fulbright-Hays Grant for his research in Vilnius using Lithuanian archives and libraries; a National Council for East European and Eurasian Research Grant; a research grant from The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture; a Fulbright Research Grant at Hebrew University in Jerusalem; and a George S. and Gladys W. Queen Award for Excellence in History Teaching.

Fellowship Research

While in residence at the Center, Professor Weeks researched government policy, everyday life, and resistance in Kovno and Vilnius. He gave particular attention to the relationships between Jews and their Christian neighbors, both Lithuanian and Polish, and the complicated three-way relations in Vilna between German and Lithuanian authorities, and Jews, and Polish civilians. With his language skills in German, Russian, French, Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Lithuanian, Professor Weeks was able to consult Yizkor books and several important archival collections at the Museum in order to complete his project.

Professor Weeks was in residence at the Mandel Center from May 15 to August 15, 2006.