Religion and Jewish Survival in the Occupied Soviet Territories

February 2, 2016 at 4:00 PM Pacific Time

A public lecture by Dr. Kiril Feferman (Israel/Russia)
2015-2016 Center Research Fellow at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research

Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research

Dr. Kiril Feferman has conducted extensive research about the Holocaust in Crimea, the North Caucasus, and the Soviet Union. In this lecture, he will illuminate an important and previously unresearched aspect of the Holocaust: the role of religion in influencing the behavior and decisions of Jews and non-Jews in the Soviet territories during German occupation.

He is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Jewish Studies at the Russian State University for Humanities and was the Director of Education and Research at the Russian Research and Educational Holocaust Center in Moscow.

Dr. Feferman received his PhD in 2008 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he presented a dissertation on the Holocaust in Crimea and the Caucasus. He has since authored two books: The Holocaust on the Russian Ethnic Frontier: The Crimea and North Caucasus and Soviet Jewish Stepchild: The Holocaust in the Soviet Mindset, 1941-1964, as well as edited or co-edited multiple collections on the Holocaust and/or mass violence. Dr. Feferman is currently finishing his third book project, “If We had Wings, We would Fly to You”: A Soviet Jewish Family Faces Destruction, 1941-42, which is under review by Indiana University Press.

Dr. Feferman, our 2015-2016 Center Research Fellow, has held previous fellowships at the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. Dr. Feferman was a 2013 recipient of the Egit Prize for Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Literature from the Israeli Trade Union, and has also received awards from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Nevzlin Center, the Ben Zvi Institute, and the World Sephardic Federation.