Dr. Michaela Raggam-Blesch

Professional Background

Michaela Raggam-Blesch is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna with a habilitation project on “mixed families” during the Nazi period in Vienna. Dr. Raggam-Blesch has received various fellowships and was awarded the Leon Zelman Award for Dialogue and Understanding in 2022. She was the curator of several exhibitions on the Holocaust – most recently, the exhibit “The Vienna Model of Radicalisation: Austria and the Shoah,” which has been shown at the House of Austrian History (2021), the Holocaust Memorial Center Budapest (2022), and The Wiener Holocaust Library (2022). 

Following her book Zwischen Ost und West: Identitätskonstruktionen jüdischer Frauen in Wien (Studien Verlag, 2008) on autobiographies of Jewish women in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, Dr. Raggam-Blesch has focused extensively on the Holocaust in Austria. She co-authored Topographie der Shoah: Gedächtnisorte des zerstörten jüdischen Wien (Mandelbaum Verlag, 2015) and co-edited Letzte Orte: Die Wiener Sammellager und die Deportationen 1941/42 (Mandelbaum Verlag, 2021), both of which are now in their second editions. Additionally, she has contributed articles to various books and journals, including the Journal of Genocide Research (2019) and Yad Vashem Studies (2022). Her latest work, co-edited with Peter Black and Marianne Windsperger, is the 2024 volume Deported: Comparative Perspectives on Paths to Annihilation for Jewish Populations under Nazi German Control, Volume 9 of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies publication series.

Fellowship Research

Michaela Raggam-Blesch was awarded an Alexander Grass Memorial Fellowship for her research project, “Bonds of Intimacy and Dependency: Survival Strategies of Intermarried Families in Nazi-Dominated Europe.” Her project explores the impact of the Nazi regime on the daily lives of intermarried families and how they navigated their intimacy, interdependencies, and struggle for survival. Drawing on the Museum's resources, Dr. Raggam-Blesch will focus on interviews and personal papers of the persecuted and holdings of several Jewish communities and postwar trials. 

Residency Period: September 1, 2024–December 31, 2024