Dr. Lauren Rossi

Professional Background

Lauren Rossi received her PhD from Brown University (2009) and is currently Assistant Professor of Holocaust and Genocide History at Simon Fraser University as well as managing editor of Contemporary Church History Quarterly. Her first book, Wehrmacht Priests: Catholicism and the Nazi War of Annihilation (2015) was published by Harvard University Press. She has published in the fields of modern European history, Holocaust history, and contemporary genocide studies. She recently provided the historical introduction for Marie Doduck’s memoir, A Childhood Unspoken (The Azrieli Foundation, 2023) and co-edited with Martin Kitchen the third edition of A History of Modern Germany: 1800 to the Present (2023).

Fellowship Research

Lauren Rossi was awarded a Broadening Academia Initiative Hybrid Fellowship for her research project, “Family Histories: Child Survivors and Memories of the Holocaust.” Her current project concerns the experiences of child survivors of the Holocaust in western Europe and their navigation of the end-of-war period, from late 1944 to late 1947. Questions that animate this project include the power and fragility of childhood memory, the significance and limitations of eyewitness accounts that stem from childhood memory, and the coping mechanisms that child survivors employed to survive both the genocide as well as the post-genocide period. She is using both written and oral sources in multiple languages, including English, French, German, Flemish, and Dutch.

This hybrid fellowship facilitates her access to the archival collections of the USHMM, focusing on survivor testimonies via recorded interviews and personal papers. The project is primarily an oral history based on personal accounts of the Holocaust as experienced by children. This topic contributes to two kinds of vindication: one, of child survivors as legitimate survivors of genocide and, as such, important eyewitnesses; and two, of oral history as an authentic and significant method for gathering and preserving the voices of individual eyewitnesses to history.

Fellowship Period: November 1, 2024 – April 30, 2025