Ion Popa chosen as Fortunoff/VWI joint fellow

Ion Popa is a Saul Kagan Claims Conference Postdoctoral Fellow in Advanced Shoah Studies (New York) and Honorary Research Fellow of the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Manchester. His research focus lies in the field of Jewish-Christian Relations in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust. His numerous publications include the monograph The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust and the article "The 7th Rosiori Regiment and the Holocaust in Romania and the Soviet Union," the latter published in Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust in 2018.

Popa's project will survey, synthesize, and compare nearly 70 testimonies in the Fortunoff Archive related to experiences of Jews who converted to Christianity before and during the Holocaust. Popa aims to identify reasons why Jews chose to convert and to "place them in the context of other strategies of survival. It will also examine the identity dilemmas these people faced and provide a glance into their post-Holocaust fate."

In addition to this work, Popa will produce a critical edition of a testimony for the Fortunoff Archive's series.

The Joint Fellowship is a new cooperative initiative between the Fortunoff Video Archive and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute (VWI). For more information on the VWI, located in the heart of Vienna, visit their website: https://www.vwi.ac.at/index.php/en/