Ms. Ella Falldorf

Professional Background

Ella Falldorf is a PhD candidate and research associate in the Art History Department at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, where she works on the DFG-funded research project “Beyond the Limits of Representation. Artistic Artifacts of Concentration Camp Inmates as Visual Interpretation of the Camp Reality.” She earned her master's degree in Holocaust studies at Haifa University with an award-winning thesis on Buchenwald concentration camp inmates’ depictions of forced labor. She earned her bachelor's degrees in Art History, Film Studies, and Sociology at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and Panthéon-Sorbonne University.

From 2018 to 2020, Ms. Falldorf worked as a freelancer with the Art Collection of the Buchenwald Memorial. In 2023, she co-organized the 26th Workshop on the History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites in Łódź, Poland, as well as an international conference about visual representations of the Holocaust at Jena University. 

Ms. Falldorf has published several book chapters and articles in the journals German History and The Journal for Holocaust Research. Ms. Falldorf also co-founded the Holocaust Culture Network with Dr. Kobi Kabalek and is a board member of the association “Riebeckstraße 63 e.V.”, which is dedicated to establishing an active memorial at the historical site of the former workhouse in Leipzig. 

Fellowship Research

Ella Falldorf was awarded the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History-Munich & Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Exchange Scholar Fellowship for her research project “Prisoner Societies in Inmates' Art.” Her work examines visual testimonies created by inmates in Nazi concentration camps and analyzes them within the social frameworks from which they emerged and which they depict. More than 2,000 drawings, watercolors, and small sculptures created in the Buchenwald concentration camp and its subcamps provide an entrance point to a comparative case study on camp art. These visual testimonies present early attempts to understand and communicate extreme experiences through the (often distorted) lens of familiar cultural forms. Despite their predominantly realistic visual language, these images do not speak for themselves but require analysis. To examine the artists’ use of images, values, and cultural models that would account for the camp reality, these artworks are considered in relation to the socio-historical conditions of their production.

This fellowship allows Ms. Falldorf access to the USHMM’s rich art collection to research individual artists’ stories through diaries, oral history interviews, and films. She will also examine the reception of visual testimonies from camps in the postwar period. 

Residency Period: January 1, 2025 – April 30, 2025