2026 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar Lecture

Homes as Witnesses of the Holocaust in Paris

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In the annual distinguished lecture, Professor Sarah Gensburger will share the research from the recently published book Appartements témoins. La spoliation des locataires juifs à Paris, 1940-1946, co-written with Isabelle Backouche and Eric le Bourhis (La Découverte, 2025). The book was awarded the Albertine Translation Grant 2025 and will be published in English by Rutgers University Press in 2027.

As a political scientist, Gensburger has been studying the public policies of remembrance and their feedback in a critical perspective. As a historian, she is a specialist in the micro-history of the Holocaust in Paris, using space and geography to study social interactions in time of crises

Gensburger is the author of 15 books, including Beyond Memory: Can We Really Learn from the Past, Palgrave, 2020, with Sandrine Lefranc; Memory on my Doorstep: Chronicles of the Bataclan Neighborhood (Paris, 2015-2016), Leuven University Press, 2019; Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews: A Photographic Album, Paris 1940-1944, Indiana University Press, 2015 and National Policy, Global Memory: The Commemoration of the Righteous among the Nations from Jerusalem to Paris, Berghahn Books, 2016. Her books, articles, and book chapters have been published in French, English, Polish, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and German.

Photo caption: 118 avenue Parmentier, Paris 11th district, "The Malowanczyk will never be able to recover their tenants' rights after the war," Memorial de la Shoah.