Dr. Andrea Wuerth

Professional Background

Andrea Wuerth holds a PhD and a master’s degree in political science from Johns Hopkins University, and a bachelor’s degree in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia.

Dr. Wuerth taught politics at Whitman College and women’s studies at San Francisco State and was a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California and Stanford University’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She also directed programs and taught seminars on globalization and microfinance at Lehigh University. She has worked as a high school teacher and as an education and communications director for the Marion Cheek Jackson Center, focusing on local and oral histories of African-Americans in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She has been an independent scholar since 2020.

Dr. Wuerth’s current research examines a series of postwar homes for Jewish child Holocaust survivors and the caregivers who worked there. Recognizing the particular needs of young, orphaned Jewish survivors, Jewish aid organizations, including the Central British Fund, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (Society for Assistance to Children, or OSE), often working with the Jewish Agency, quickly purchased homes throughout Europe and hired staff to provide for the children and to help restore their Jewish identities. This project focuses on homes in England, France, Germany, Poland, and Italy, paying special attention to how “exceptional caregivers” assisted survivors and built foundations for children’s futures.

Dr. Wuerth has also published papers on the post-wall reproductive rights movement in Germany (1989 to 1995), art and politics in post-wall Germany, and the life of Dutch child survivor Luke Wijnberg. She is the author of a number of websites, including coffeewithluke.com, mighty-book.com, and chapelhillstories.com. She is also working on a book about the lives and correspondence of her German grandmother and immigrant mother.

Fellowship Research

While at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Broadening Academia Initiative Hybrid Fellow, Andrea Wuerth will conduct research on the Youth Aliyah movement and its role in recruiting and shepherding young Holocaust survivors from Jewish children’s homes to Palestine/Israel. Many of these young survivors became integral to Israel’s early founding efforts, joining the Israeli Defense Forces and establishing kibbutzim.

Dr. Wuerth plans to examine the papers of Eva Michaelis Stern, a central figure in the Youth Aliyah organization, which helped bring thousands of children and youth–including many from the children’s homes–to Palestine/Israel during and after the war. Other important Museum collections, including photographs and film, document the experiences of the children and children’s home staff at various transit points, including during time spent in detention camps in Cyprus where many stayed after being refused entry to Palestine.

Fellowship Period: November 1, 2025 – April 30, 2026