Mr. Tomaz Jardim

Professional Background

Tomaz Jardim received an M.A. in history at the University of Toronto and a B.A. with honors in history from Trent University. During his fellowship at the Museum, he was a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Toronto. For his Diane and Howard Wohl Fellowship, Mr. Jardim conducted research for his project, “The Mauthausen War Crimes Trial and American Justice in Germany.”

Mr. Jardim is the recipient of several fellowships and awards for his research, including an Ontario Graduate Scholarship; a Language Study Scholarship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD); and the Bagnany Award for Excellence in the Field of History, Trent University. He has served as a fact checker and abstract writer for Holocaust memoirs submitted for publication to the Azrieli Foundation. He has worked as a teaching assistant at the University of Toronto and has taught history seminar groups on the Holocaust, lecturing on many Holocaust-related topics. In addition, he is a musician and is fluent in German.

Fellowship Research

During his tenure at the Center, Mr. Jardim studied the 1946 Mauthausen War Crimes Trial. This trial, which involved more than sixty perpetrators from one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps, has remained virtually absent from the historiography of the Holocaust. Among other issues, Mr. Jardim examined the controversial “parent trial system” as well as the concept of a “common design to commit war crimes,” both of which were employed by the American Army in order to prosecute hundreds of perpetrators in the shortest period of time the law would allow. Mr. Jardim explored the contemporary perceptions of Nazi criminality that the trial reveals, and assessed the role of the Mauthausen trial in shaping the historical memory of the Holocaust. He used the Museum’s oral history collection, as well as the American Gathering Conference Collection.

Mr. Jardim was in residence at the Mandel Center from February 1 to April 30, 2008.