University of Oregon doctoral candidate Eva Serfozo was one of nine graduate students and Ph.D. candidates chosen by the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation (AJCF) to participate in the Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellows Program.
The powerful, three-week program held in Oświęcim (Auschwitz), Poland, fosters academic and personal growth and community activism as participants study the universal implications of the Holocaust.
Originally from Hungary, Serfozo obtained a master’s degree in English and Spanish language and literature in her native country. Currently working towards her doctorate in romance languages at the UO, her research focuses on social collapse in Spain and Hungary.
After a brief orientation at New York City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Auschwitz Jewish Center fellows traveled to Poland on July 2. They will stay for three weeks, during which time they will visit Krakow, Warsaw, Oświęcim and Lodz. The fellows will also be taken on a study trip throughout southeast Poland to explore the area’s rich Jewish heritage and meet with local Jewish and non-Jewish leaders to learn about pre-war Jewish life, life under the Nazi occupation and Communism, as well as the status of the Jewish community in Poland today.
In Oświęcim, the fellows will attend an intensive program at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum where they will tour the camps; study the history of Jewish, Roma and Polish inmates; and learn how to use the archives, collections, publications and educational departments.
The Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellow Program is supported through named fellowships made possible through the generosity of individual contributors. Additional support is provided by Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany: Rabbi Israel Miller Fund for Shoah Research, Documentation and Education.
The Auschwitz Jewish Center is operated by the Museum of Jewish Heritage from the museum’s New York City campus. The center opened its doors in 2000 and joined with the museum in 2006. Located just three kilometers from the Auschwitz–Birkenau death camps, the center provides a place for individuals and groups from around the world to pray, study and learn about the vibrancy of Jewish culture before the war, and memorialize victims of the Holocaust. The only Jewish presence in the vicinity of Auschwitz, its facilities include Oświęcim’s only surviving synagogue and the Kluger House, the former home of the last Jew of Oświęcim.
- by Melissa Foley, Public Affairs Communications