“’These unfortunate people’: The International Humanitarian Response to European Jewish Refugees in Shanghai, 1945-1951.”
Professional Background
Ms. Sara Halpern is currently a PhD Candidate in History at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. She holds a MA in Judaic Studies from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and her Bachelors in History from Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. As the Ben and Zelda Cohen Fellow at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Ms. Halpern will be conducting research for her dissertation “‘These unfortunate people’: The International Humanitarian Response to European Jewish Refugees in Shanghai, 1945-1951.”
Ms. Halpern can speak and read German and Hebrew, and has reading abilities in French and Yiddish.
Ms. Halpern is the winner of multiple awards and fellowships. She was a Leo Baeck Programme/Studienstiftung des deutsche Volkes Fellow during 2017-2018. She also received the Social Sciences Research Council Predissertation Fellowship in 2014, Leo Baeck-DAAD fellowship in 2016 and grants from the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at the Ohio State University. In 2016, Ms. Halpern presented “A ‘Catastrophic’ Situation in Liberated Shanghai: The Joint, 14,000 Hungry Refugees, and the Currency Markets,” at the American Jewish Historical Society Biennial Scholars’ Conference in New York City. Ms. Halpern is also the author of several book reviews and articles.
Fellowship Research
While in residence at the Mandel Center, Ms. Halpern will initiate research on the political, legal, and social challenges of European Jewish emigration from Shanghai between 1945 and 1951. Drawing on the Museum's resources, she seeks to analyze how the DP problem was understood by 15,000 Jewish refugees, international Jewish NGOs, the United Nations, and the Allied governments within the framework of changing political order in China, and understand the ways in which these parties debated policies and laws concerning relief, repatriation, and resettlement.
Ms. Halpern will be in residence through March 31, 2019 and can be contacted at her museum email shalpern@ushmm.org.