Participant Info

First Name
Christine
Last Name
Schmidt
Affiliation
The Wiener Holocaust Library
Website URL
https://christineeschmidt.com/
Keywords
Holocaust, Jewish history, Gender, Archives
Additional Contact Information

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am a historian of the Holocaust, with a passion for and commitment to public history, archives, and cultural heritage. I work as Deputy Director and Head of Research at The Wiener Holocaust Library, London, where I oversee our academic programming and research initiatives, curate exhibitions, and develop research partnerships. I am also the Deputy National Coordinator for EHRI-UK, the UK national node of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure.

My own research has focused on postwar tracing and documentation efforts, gender, migration, archives creation, the concentration camp system in Nazi Germany, and comparative studies of collaboration, rescue and resistance in France and Hungary. I’m currently writing a social history and archival biography of a collection of survivor accounts recorded by the Library and led by Eva Reichmann in the 1950s.

I have many years of experience teaching, curating and consulting on exhibitions and other initiatives, as well as project management. Since completing my PhD at Clark University in 2003, I have worked as an adjunct distance education lecturer at Gratz College and  the University of Maryland Global Campus. I have also  previously worked for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC on the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettosand as Director of Education for the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous in New York.

My recent publications include “Finding the Archival Traces of ‘Misery Trains’: Early Accounts of Train Transport before the Holocaust” in the Journal of Transport History (2024);  “Women in Child Search:  A Gendered View of Post World War II Reconstruction” (co-authored with D. Stone) in the European Review of History (2023);  “Exhibiting the Missing: The World Jewish Congress’ London Exhibition of 1947, ‘Search for the Scattered‘” (co-authored with D. Stone) in The Journal of Holocaust Research (2023); “‘Privilege’ and Trauma: Sieg Maandag’s Climb Upwards,”  in American Imago  (2023);  “Those Left Behind: Early Search Efforts in Wartime and Postwar Britain,” in Tracing and Documentation Victims of Nazi Persecution (de Gruyter, 2020); “’We are all Witnesses’: Eva Reichmann and the Wiener Holocaust Library’s Eyewitness Accounts Collection” in Agency and the Holocaust: Essays in Honor of Deborah Dwork (Palgrave, 2020). Articles on Holocaust letters as sites of knowledge production are in progress.

Recent Publications

(Co-editor with Elizabeth Anthony and Joanna Sliwa). Older Jews and the Holocaust: Persecution, Displacement, and Survival, Wayne State University Press in cooperation with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2026.

(Co-editor with Sandra Lipner, Charlie Knight, Clara Dijkstra). Holocaust Letters: Methodology, Cases, and Reflections. Bloomsbury, 2026.

(Co-editor with Victoria Van Orden Martínez and Ewa Koźmińska-Frejlak, History of Intellectual Culture (HIC), Special Section II: Gender, Archiving and Knowledge Production after the Holocaust (Volume 4), De Gruyter, 2025.

(Co-editor with Suzanne Bardgett and Dan Stone). Survivors of Persecution: Beyond Camps and Forced Labour. Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.

(In preparation/accepted, with Dan Stone). “What was Known? Holocaust-era Letters as Sources of Knowledge Production.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2026.

“From the Umschlagplatz to The Wiener Holocaust Library: Maria and Maximillian Wortmann’s Last Letters,” MAVCOR Journal, 2026.

“Gender and the Materiality of Witnessing: The Wiener Library and Postwar Holocaust Knowledge.” History of Intellectual Culture (HIC), Special Section II: Gender, Archiving and Knowledge Production after the Holocaust (Volume 4), De Gruyter, 2025.

“Finding Archival Traces of ‘Misery Trains’: Early Accounts of Transport Resistance after the Holocaust.” Journal of Transport History Special Issue: Mileage of the Rails. Interrogating Conflict Transports’ Histories, Practices, and Resonances, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1177/00225266241249133

(with Elise Bath). “Shared Authority and Research Ethics at The Wiener Holocaust Library.” Culture Unbound: Special Issue, Bridging Research Praxes across Pluralities of Knowledge, 2024.https://cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/issue/view/432

(with Dan Stone). “Women in Child Search: A Gendered View of Post-World War II Reconstruction.” European Review of History, November 2023. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2023.2269958

(with Dan Stone). “Exhibiting the Missing: The World Jewish Congress’ London Exhibition of 1947, ‘The Search for the Scattered.’” The Journal of Holocaust Research 37, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2023.2198857

“‘Privilege’ and Trauma: Sieg Maandag’s Climb Upwards.” American Imago 80, no 1 (Spring 2023): 81-106.https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aim.2023.0004.

Media Coverage
Country Focus
Expertise by Geography
Eastern Europe, Germany, Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
20th century
Expertise by Topic
Gender, Genocide, Holocaust & Nazi Persecution, World War II