Steven Weitzman (SW): Elisabeth, thank you for contributing so much to our fellowship program this last semester. You came to the Katz Center to do research on something that you refer to as the “New York Black Book of 1946.” Can you tell us a bit about what this text is and what led you to investigate it?
In volume 111.2 of JQR, historian Zohar Segev wrote an article, “Rethinking the Dilemma of Bombing Auschwitz: Support, Opposition, and Reservation,” that relied on new archival documents to argue that World Jewish Congress official Leon Kubowitzki lobbied U.S. administration officials to consider a ground assault on the Auschwitz extermination camp.
A few weeks ago, the Katz Center presented the 23rd annual Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Lecture at Penn, featuring a conversation between Carlo Ginzburg and Francesca Trivellato on the topic of microhistory and global history.
In 1832, an antisemitic scandal shook France to its core. In the spring of that year, the Bourbon royal family—ousted by yet another revolution—was moldering in exile when its most glamorous member, the duchesse de Berry, hatched a plot to reclaim the throne for her 11-year-old son. Surrounded by a band of young nobles willing to die for the royalist cause, the duchess landed on the coast of France in May.
