November 18, 2025 / Homecoming: Holocaust Survivors and Greece, 1941-46
Book Talk | Homecoming: Holocaust Survivors and Greece, 1941-46
When: Tuesday, November 18 | 12:30 PM
Updated Location: Slifka Center, Chapel (2nd floor), 80 Wall Street (map)
The event will now take place at the Slifka Center instead of the Humanities Quadrangle, as listed in an earlier newsletter.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Katerina Králová's, Professor in Contemporary History, Balkan, Eurasian and Central European Studies, Charles University in Prague. Dr. Katerina Králová will present her latest book, Homecoming: Holocaust Survivors and Greece, 1941–1946.
This book documents the experiences of the Jews of Greece who returned home after having been in hiding, combatants, deportees and refugees during World War II. These are stories that rarely feature in our discussions of the Holocaust and that raise important questions about the aftermath of the Holocaust across Europe. Greek Jews wanted more than anything to survive and come back home. Yet their expectations of homecoming could not be met in the reality of postwar Greece where they faced isolation, anguish, deprivation, and hostility in the midst of a civil war. Based on exhaustive archival research and new testimonies and interviews with Holocaust survivors across several continents.
Dr. Katerina Králová is professor in Contemporary History, Balkan, Eurasian and Central European Studies of the Institute of International Studies and former Vice-Dean for International Relations, 2010-2015, at the Faculty of Social Science, Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic). While in residence at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Dr. Králová conducted research on her project, "The Jewish Community in Postwar Greece: Between Assimilation and Exclusion.” Her publications include Stegnosan ta dakrya mas. Ellines prosfyges stin Tsechoslovakia [Our tears dried up: Greek refugees in Czechoslovakia] (2015); “Reparationsforderungen: Umfang, Rechtsfragen, politische Rahmenbedingungen,” in Die Krise in Griechenland. Ursprünge, Verlauf, Folgen (2015); “Nemecká kulturní politika pod Akropolí: Nemecký archeologický institut v Athénách [German Cultural Policy under the Acropolis: German Archeological Institute in Athens]” in Nemecké historické ústavy v zahranicí. Nemecká kulturní zahranicní politika (2013); and Sti skia tis Katochis: Oi ellinogermanikes scheseis tin periodo 1941-2010 [In the Shadow of Occupation: Greek-German Relations, 1941-2010] (2013).
This event is co-sponsored by the Fortunoff Video Archive, European Studies Council of the Yale MacMillan Center, and the Hellenic Studies Program at Yale.