Kiril Feferman, Ph.D.
Center Research Fellowship
2015-2016

Dr. Kiril Feferman is a former Senior Lecturer in the Department of Jewish Studies at the Russian State University for Humanities, Director of Education and Research at the Russian Research and Educational Holocaust Center in Moscow, and current head of the Holocaust History Center at Ariel University.

During his time in residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Professor Feferman gave a public lecture on the underresearched topic of the role of religion in influencing the behavior and decisions of Jews and non-Jews in the Nazi-occupied Soviet territories between 1941 and 1944. Ultimately, Feferman’s goal was to prove that rescuers and perpetrators were not simply fighting over Nazism. Rescuers, he believes, represent tradition and religion, while perpetrators represent modernism.

He has authored two books since his Ph.D., 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. His most recent book project, “If We had Wings, We would Fly to You”: A Soviet Jewish Family Faces Destruction, 1941-42, is forthcoming with the Academic Studies Press. His article “Save Your Souls: Jewish Conversion & Survival in the Occupied Soviet Territories during the Holocaust,” which grew out of his fellowship project at the Center, is forthcoming in Modern Judaism.