Ms. Joanna Sliwa

Ms. Joanna Sliwa is a PhD candidate at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in Worcester, MA (USA). She received a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in Holocaust and genocide studies from Kean University in New Jersey. For her David and Fela Shapell Fellowship, she conducted research for her project “Jewish Children in German-Occupied Kraków.”

Ms. Sliwa's publications include “Coping with Distorted Reality: Children in the Kraków Ghetto” in Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History (article) and in The Holocaust and Local History (book chapter; Thomas Kühne and Tom Lawson, eds., 2011); “Jewish Humor as Source of Research on Polish-Jewish Relations” in Jews and Humor: Studies in Jewish Civilization (2009); and “Baskin Oran: Denialism and Civil Society in Turkey” (2009–10) and “Olga Litvak: Death and the Maydl— Jewish Femininity and the Denial of Beauty in the Art of Marc Chagall” (2008–2009) in the Strassler Center’s Year End Report. She is also the author of several forthcoming publications, including “Clandestine Activities and Concealed Presence. A Case Study of Children in the Kraków Ghetto” for the Hadassah Brandeis Institute conference Rising from the Ashes: Jewish Families and Children during and after the Holocaust.

She has received several awards and fellowships, including the Ralph and Shirley Rose Fellowship at Clark University’s Strassler Center; a Fulbright Fellowship; the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) Graduate Studies Fellowship; a travel scholarship from the German Historical Institute in Warsaw; the Harriet Irsay Scholarship from the American Institute of Polish Culture; the Polish and Slavic Federal Credit Union Scholarship; the International Summer Yiddish Program Scholarship from the Goldreich Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture at Tel Aviv University; and the Summer Research Scholarship for Graduate Students from Abroad from Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research.

She has English, Polish, German, Yiddish, and Hebrew language skills.

Ms. Joanna Sliwa was in residence at the Mandel Center from July 1 to October 30, 2012.