Dr. Elizabeth Anthony joined the Mandel Center in 2013 as the International Tracing Service staff scholar, and since 2019, she has served as director of Visiting Scholar Programs. She oversees a residential fellowship program for Holocaust researchers from around the world and the Mandel Center's Broadening Academia Initiative, designed to support Holocaust scholars who are untenured, contingent, or working outside of academia.
Dr. Anthony’s research explores the postwar Jewish community of Vienna, the archives of the International Tracing Service, and the experiences of older Jews during and after the Holocaust. Her book, The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust, was co-published by Wayne State University Press and the Museum in 2021. She is co-editor and contributor, with Dr. Christine Schmidt and Dr. Joanna Sliwa, of Older Jews and the Holocaust (Wayne State University Press, 2026). She is also co-editor and contributor, with Dr. Kateřina Králová and Dr. Andrea Löw, of Liberation Revisited (Wallstein Verlag, forthcoming 2026), a special issue of European Holocaust Studies focused on liberation and the end of World War II.
Dr. Anthony first worked at the Museum from 1998 to 2004, including five years in the Museum’s Office of Survivor Affairs. From 2005 to 2007, she was a caseworker and casework manager for HIAS in Vienna, Austria. Among many fellowship awards, she held a Barbara and Richard Rosenberg Fellowship at the Mandel Center and a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Austria.
Education
PhD, history, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, 2016
MSW, community organizing, University of Maryland School of Social Work, Baltimore, Maryland, 1997
BA, liberal arts (concentration: economics), St. Mary’s College of Maryland, St. Mary’s City, Maryland, 1993
Languages
English
German
Select Publications
Older Jews and the Holocaust: Persecution, Displacement, and Survival (Wayne State University Press, forthcoming 2026)
“Elderly Concentration Camp Survivors in Postwar Vienna,” in Older Jews and the Holocaust: Persecution, Displacement, and Survival (Wayne State University Press, 2026)
The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust (Wayne State University Press, 2021)
“Rebuilding and Renewing Viennese Jewish Identity after the Holocaust” in Agency and the Holocaust: Essays in Honor of Debórah Dwork, edited by Thomas Kühne and Mary Jane Rein (Palgrave, 2020)
“The First Returnees: Holocaust Survivors in Vienna in the Immediate Postwar Period” in Lessons and Legacies XII: New Directions in Holocaust Research and Education, edited by Wendy Lower and Lauren Faulkner Rossi (Northwestern University Press, 2017)
Freilegungen: Spiegelungen der NS-Verfolgung und ihrer Konsequenzen, Jahrbuch des International Tracing Service, Vol. 4, coeditor (Wallstein Verlag, 2015)
“Representations of Sexual Violence in ITS Documentation: Concentration Camp Brothels” in Freilegungen: Spiegelungen der NS-Verfolgung und ihrer Konsequenzen, Jahrbuch des International Tracing Service, Vol. 4 (Wallstein Verlag, 2015)
Select Presentations and Interviews
"Where Do I Belong? Holocaust Survivors Return to Vienna", Elizabeth Anthony in discussion with Albert Lichtblau, February 17, 2022
The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust, August 2021 New Books in Genocide Studies podcast
The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust, June 2021 book presentation, Austrian Cultural Forum Washington, DC
“Elderly Survivors in Postwar Vienna," Older Jews and the Holocaust symposium, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 9 September 2025
Older Jews and the Holocaust book launch with the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 23 April 2026
Older Jews and the Holocaust, April 2026, Dialogues in Holocaust Studies and the Second World War podcast