Wolf Gruner Earns Three Awards for New Book on Anti-Jewish Persecution in Bohemia and Moravia

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research is celebrating the work of its Director Wolf Gruner, whose most recent book Die Judenverfolgung im Protektorat Böhmen/Mähren. Lokale Initiativen, zentrale Entscheidungen, jüdische Antworten 1939-1945 (Anti-Jewish Persecution in the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia. Local Initiatives, Central Decisions, Jewish Responses) just earned its third distinguished prize. The book just earned second place for the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research for books published in 2015 and 2016, second only to a posthumous award to the Center's inaugural Shapiro scholar David Cesarani.

The book has already earned the Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Book Prize from the German Studies Association for the best book in Holocaust Studies in 2015 and 2016. It also earned a book prize for Most outstanding German Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2017 by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, the VG WORT and the German Foreign Office. This prize will fund a translation of the book into English. The English edition will be published with Berghahn Books in 2019.

Published in October 2016, Die Judenverfolgung im Protektorat Böhmen/Mähren. Lokale Initiativen, zentrale Entscheidungen, jüdische Antworten 1939-1945 (Anti-Jewish Persecution in the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia. Local Initiatives, Central Decisions, Jewish Responses) details the anti-Jewish policies put into place by Czech and German authorities in the Bohemia and Moravia protectorate and how they resulted in the radicalization of the persecution of Czech Jews. The book also highlights the diverse reactions of the Jewish communities under siege and the individual resistance efforts of many Czech Jews.  

In other recognitions of his distinction, Gruner was recently appointed to the Academic Committee for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is a profound honor and powerful acknowledgment of his contributions to the fields of Holocaust and genocide research.