Center Director Wolf Gruner Awarded Invitational Senior Scholar Fellowship at USHMM

Center Founding Director Wolf Gruner has been awarded the 2025-2026 J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington DC.

For nine months, he will draw from the museum’s archival and library collections to advance his project on the forgotten mass attacks on Jewish homes during the 1938 Kristallnacht. In his extensive research over the last decade with testimonies, newspapers, administrative reports, photographs, diaries, artifacts, trial records, and letters, Professor Gruner has discovered that the mass destruction of private homes was systematic, brutal, and widespread, and often accompanied by beatings, murder, and sexual assault. His research shows that the number of demolished homes was greater than the number of destroyed shops and synagogues combined. The mass assault on Jewish families in their homes, thus, must be understood as the very core of the Nazi pogrom. Moreover, his study will highlight a universal aspect of such violence: devastating material and emotional effects of mass home destruction for any persecuted group.

In November 2018, he shared his preliminary research on the topic at the international conference organized by the USC Center for Advanced Genocide Research and USC Casden Institute for the 80^th anniversary of Kristallnacht. He authored a chapter in the volume that emerged from that conference – New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison (Purdue University Press, 2019). In November 2019, he wrote a widely-read piece in The Conversation about the roots and trajectory of his project, sharing evidence he was gathering.

The senior fellowship at the Mandel Center will provide Professor Gruner the time to work on his book about the Nazi pogrom while connecting with other fellows. He is part of a cohort of 26 international fellows the Mandel Center will host throughout the academic year. His fellowship is the latest development in an enduring relationship with USHMM. Professor Gruner held the Pearl Resnick Postdoctoral Fellowship at USHMM in 2002-2003. He taught several seminars for faculty, organized by the Mandel Center, on Holocaust and genocide-related issues. In 2017, in recognition of his distinction in the field, Professor Gruner was appointed to the Academic Committee for the museum, duties that are on hold during his fellowship. While on sabbatical from USC and undertaking this fellowship, he remains deeply involved in the activities of the USC Center for Advanced Genocide Research.