“Prelude to Mass Murder: Anti-Jewish Ritual Violence in Germany, Austria, Poland, and Lithuania, 1933-1941”
Professional Background
Dr. T. Fielder Valone holds a PhD in History from Indiana University. Dr. Valone has published and spoken publicly on a wide range of topics, including the German minority in western Poland during World War Two, Jewish slave labor on the Baltic coast, the Holocaust by bullets in Eastern Europe, and humiliation rituals in rural Lithuania. He has published a number of articles and book chapters in different venues, including Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2014), Beyond Ordinary Men: Christopher R. Browning and Holocaust Historiography (2019), and Collaboration in Eastern Europe during World War Two and the Holocaust (2019), among others. His research has been supported by Fulbright, the Saul Kagan Fellows Program, and other institutions.
Fellowship Research
Dr. Valone was awarded the 2019-2020 Judith B. and Burton P. Resnick Invitational Scholar for the Study of Antisemitism fellowship at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies for his research project, “Prelude to Mass Murder: Anti-Jewish Ritual Violence in Germany, Austria, Poland, and Lithuania, 1933-1941.” Drawing on Museum resources, including little-used Jewish eyewitness survivor testimonies, Dr. Valone is raising questions about community and belonging, leadership and followership, and especially about the persistence of archaic forms of religious prejudice—the burning of beards and Payot, or the destruction of Torah scrolls and forced baptisms—amidst a thoroughly modern system of mass murder.