“Questions of Evidence: The Kovno Ghetto and the Production of Historical Knowledge”
Professional Background
Simon Goldberg is currently PhD Candidate in History at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Mr. Goldberg is the recipient of several awards, including a Wexner Graduate Fellowship in Jewish Studies (2016–2020) and the Baltic Jewish History Fellowship at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (2018-2019). His first article, “Between Poetry and History: Real-Time Writings on Holocaust Trains,” was published in the Journal of Holocaust Research (2018). A native speaker of Hebrew and English, Mr. Goldberg also has language skills in Yiddish and German.
Fellowship Research
Mr. Goldberg was awarded a 2019-2020 Fund for the Study of the Holocaust in Lithuania Fellowship for his research project, “Questions of Evidence: The Kovno Ghetto and the Production of Historical Knowledge.” While in residence at the Mandel Center, Mr. Goldberg will study the production and reception of knowledge about the Kovno ghetto, beginning with documents created by members of the Jewish police. Drawing on a wide range of records from the Central State Archives of Lithuania, he will examine how wartime Jewish elites depicted ghetto life, and how their depictions in turn resonated in postwar historiography. Mr. Goldberg’s project aims to shed light on the processes that have shaped the writing of Holocaust history.