Professional Background
Dr. Andrea Löw is currently Deputy Head of the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History, Munich (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, München) and teaches at Mannheim University. Dr Löw received her PhD in History from Ruhr-University Bochum (2005). She has served as Research Associate at the Institute for Contemporary History since 2010, including conducting research for the Berlin office’s source project, “Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945” ("Jewish persecution 1933-1945"). From 2004 to 2007, she worked on the research project, “Edition der Lodzer Getto-Chronik” ("Edition of the Lodz Ghetto Chronicle"), with the University of Giessen. Her main research interests are the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, Jewish history during the Holocaust and the history of the ghettos.
Fellowship Research
During her fellowship tenure as a Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence, Dr. Löw will conduct research for her project, "German-speaking Jews after their Deportation to Occupied Eastern Europe - Expectations, Realities, Experiences." This project seeks to analyze and describe the deportees’ expectations, realities, and reactions based on personal sources like diaries, letters, memoirs, and oral testimonies. The deportees found themselves placed within an entirely new and foreign social environment, interacting with the local Jewish population, and at times with the non-Jewish population and with German officials. The study intends to display how the deportees acted and attempted to influence their condition within this complicated social situation. The project will try to answer questions as: What were the expectations and experiences of Jewish men, women, and children (and those defined as “Jewish”) who were deported from numerous cities in the Greater German Reich, first since 1939 to occupied Poland, and, starting in late 1941 and in 1942, also to places like Minsk and Riga?