Dr. Elizabeth Anthony

Dr. Elizabeth Anthony joined the Mandel Center in 2013 as the International Tracing Service staff scholar, and since 2019, she has served as director of Visiting Scholar Programs. She oversees a residential fellowship program for Holocaust researchers from around the world and the Mandel Center's Broadening Academia Initiative, designed to support Holocaust scholars who are untenured, contingent, or working outside of academia.

Dr. Anthony’s research explores the postwar Jewish community of Vienna, the archives of the International Tracing Service, and the experiences of older Jews during and after the Holocaust. Her book, The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust, was co-published by Wayne State University Press and the Museum in 2021. She is co-editor (with Dr. Christine Schmidt and Dr. Joanna Sliwa) of and contributor to Older Jews and the Holocaust, forthcoming in March 2026, also as a co-publication of Wayne State University Press and the Museum. She is currently co-editing a special issue of European Holocaust Studies focused on liberation and the end of World War II (forthcoming in 2026 with Wallstein Verlag) with Dr. Andrea Löw and Dr. Katerina Králová.

Dr. Anthony first worked at the Museum from 1998 to 2004, including five years in the Museum’s Office of Survivor Affairs. From 2005 to 2007, she was a caseworker and casework manager for HIAS in Vienna, Austria. Among many fellowship awards, she held a Barbara and Richard Rosenberg Fellowship at the Mandel Center and a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Austria.

Education

• PhD, history, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, 2016

• MSW, community organizing, University of Maryland School of Social Work, Baltimore, Maryland, 1997

• BA, liberal arts (concentration: economics), St. Mary’s College of Maryland, St. Mary’s City, Maryland, 1993

Languages

• English

• German

Select Publications

• Older Jews and the Holocaust: Persecution, Displacement, and Survival (Wayne State University Press, forthcoming 2026)

• “Elderly Concentration Camp Survivors in Postwar Vienna,” in Older Jews and the Holocaust: Persecution, Displacement, and Survival (Wayne State University Press, forthcoming 2026)

• The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust (Wayne State University Press, 2021)

• “Rebuilding and Renewing Viennese Jewish Identity after the Holocaust” in Agency and the Holocaust: Essays in Honor of Debórah Dwork, edited by Thomas Kühne and Mary Jane Rein (Palgrave, 2020)

• “The First Returnees: Holocaust Survivors in Vienna in the Immediate Postwar Period” in Lessons and Legacies XII: New Directions in Holocaust Research and Education, edited by Wendy Lower and Lauren Faulkner Rossi (Northwestern University Press, 2017)

• Freilegungen: Spiegelungen der NS-Verfolgung und ihrer Konsequenzen, Jahrbuch des International Tracing Service, Vol. 4, coeditor (Wallstein Verlag, 2015)

• “Representations of Sexual Violence in ITS Documentation: Concentration Camp Brothels” in Freilegungen: Spiegelungen der NS-Verfolgung und ihrer Konsequenzen, Jahrbuch des International Tracing Service, Vol. 4 (Wallstein Verlag, 2015)

Select Presentations and Interviews

• "Where Do I Belong? Holocaust Survivors Return to Vienna", Elizabeth Anthony in discussion with Albert Lichtblau, February 17, 2022

• The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust, August 2021 New Books in Genocide Studies podcast

• The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust, June 2021 book presentation, Austrian Cultural Forum Washington, DC

• “Free to Wait: Refugees & Returning to Life,” May 2021 keynote co-panelist at Liberation75: Global Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, Descendants, Educators, and Friends

• “My Name is Sara,” panelist at March 2021 film screening and discussion

• “Elderly Survivors in Postwar Vienna," Older Jews and the Holocaust symposium, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 9 September 2025