Teresa Walch is a Ph.D. candidate in modern European history at UC San Diego and a Fulbright scholar. Her dissertation in progress, entitled “Degenerate Spaces: The Coordination of Space in Nazi Germany”, explores how space played a crucial role in the Nazis’ rise. 

During her stay at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Walch outlined the process by which Jews in Berlin lost their rights, access to public spaces, ability to move freely, and their own homes, from 1933-38. Throughout her lecture, Walch referred to Holocaust survivor testimonies in the Visual History Archive who describe living through this period and its effect on them. “It is crucial to examine Jews’ personal experiences of alienation and isolation in 1930s Europe to help us understand what later transpired in the 1940s,” Walch said.