Dr. Suzanne Brown-Fleming

Dr. Brown-Fleming joined the Museum in 2001 and directs special projects, particularly in the international realm, of large-scale, cross-office Museum projects that originate in the Mandel Center. 

Her work has been featured in Time Magazine, Catholic News Service, Catholic News Agency, La Stampa, and Vatican News, the official news portal of the Vatican Holy See. She has appeared on CNN, EWTN Global Catholic Television Network, and in several documentaries, including Holy Silence (2020). Dr. Brown-Fleming leads the Museum's Vatican Archives Initiative.

Her current research project, Il Papa Tedesco (The German Pope): Eugenio Pacelli and Germany, 1917–1958, is a study of Pope Pius XII’s relationship to Germany and its bishops, leaders, and people during the Weimar era, the Third Reich, and the Holocaust. Another current project, “Opa War Ein Nazi (Grandpa Was a Nazi): Eduard Geist and the Crimes of the Third Reich,” is Dr. Brown-Fleming’s first attempt to research and write as both a decades-long scholar of the Holocaust and the granddaughter of a devout and locally prominent Nazi.

Education

• PhD, modern German history, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, 2002

• MA, American diplomatic history, University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia, 1993

• BA, history and English, Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, Virginia, 1991

Languages

• English

• German

• Reading ability in Italian

Select Publications

• “The Rome Lectures: Father Marie-Benoît and the Path to Jewish-Christian Rapprochement,” In Holocaust Education Today: Confronting Extremism, Hate, and Mass Atrocity Crimes. The Ethel Lefrak Holocaust Education Conference Proceedings. Carol Rittner, ed. (Greensburg, PA: Seton Hill University, 2023), pp. 137-145

• “Pope Pius XII, Vatican Neutrality and the Holocaust: Case Studies from the Newly Opened Vatican Archives,” In The Vatican and Permanent Neutrality ,Herbert Reginbogin and Marshall Breger, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington Books, 2022), pp. 105-118

• ‘May Your Holiness Act in the Interest of Protecting Those who Remain Morally Thinking People’: Vatican Responses to Antisemitism, 1933 (2017)

• Nazi Persecution and Postwar Repercussions: The International Tracing Service Archive and Holocaust Research (2016, paperback 2019)

• The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience: Cardinal Aloisius Muench and the Guilt Question in Germany, 1946–1959 (2006)

Select Recorded Presentations and Interviews

• “Rising antisemitism requires a clear Catholic response,” America Magazine, November 7, 2023

• “Vatican’s Silence on Holocaust was Shaped by Antisemitism and Caution, Archives Show,” Wall Street Journal, October 31 (Print Edition November 1), 2023

• “Pope Francis meets with delegation from US Holocaust Museum,” Vatican News, October 25, 2023

• Holy Silence, 2019 documentary film aired on PBS