"Victim Perspectives on Perpetrators: Jewish Wartime and Postwar Representations of Their ‘Lords and Masters’"
Professional Background
Amy Simon received an M.A. in history at Indiana University, an M.A. in Holocaust studies at University College, London, and a B.A. in English at the University of Texas, Austin. During her tenure at the Museum, she was a Ph.D. candidate in history at Indiana University. For her Leon Milman Memorial Fellowship, Ms. Simon conducted research on, “Victim Perspectives on Perpetrators: Jewish Wartime and Postwar Representations of Their ‘Lords and Masters.’”
Ms. Simon is the recipient of several awards from Indiana University, including the Glazer Family Fellowship, the Sara and Albert Reuben Scholarship to Support the Study of the Holocaust, and the George and Monique Stolnitz Yiddish Prize. Ms. Simon has presented her research on several topics including guilt and shame in Primo Levi’s work, German and Japanese postwar representations of race, and Anne Michael’s Fugitive Pieces in the United States and England. Ms. Simon reads German and Yiddish.
Fellowship Research
During her tenure at the Center, Ms. Simon studied the ways in which Jewish victims perceived their captors and the interaction between perpetrators and victims by examining wartime writings, immediate postwar testimonies and documents, and Holocaust memoirs. In studying these documents she uncovered how Jewish victims understood, reacted to, and represented the perpetrators; how their attitudes and reactions differ in wartime and postwar testimonies; and the roles of memory and witnessing in both wartime and postwar Holocaust writings. Ms. Simon utilized the Museum’s extensive collection of largely unpublished Yiddish language Holocaust diaries, letters, and memoirs, and other materials such as the Clandestine Archives of the Warsaw Ghetto, Holocaust survivor testimonies collected by the Central Historical Commission from 1945-1947, and the Wolf Lewkowicz collection of letters.
Ms. Simon was in residence at the Mandel Center from September 1, 2008 to May 30, 2009.