Ian Zdanowicz is making the most out of his month at USC Shoah Foundation.

Zdanowicz is the recipient of the Visiting PhD Fellowship from the USC Dornsife 2020 Genocide Resistance Research Cluster, which is led by USC Shoah Foundation executive director Stephen Smith and Wolf Gruener, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History.

During the one-month fellowship at USC, which will conclude next week, Zdanowicz is conducting research in USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive for his dissertation in political science at University of Paris 8.

Zdanowicz will present the research he has conducted so far at a lunch on Tuesday at 1 p.m. in the Social Sciences Building, room 250. All are invited to hear his presentation; RSVP at [email protected].

He previously received master’s degrees in interdisciplinary studies (history, political philosophy and culture studies) and gender studies at the University of Warsaw in 2008 and University of Paris 8 in 2010, respectively.

Zdanowicz’s dissertation is “Space as a Tool of Resistance and Survival: A Study of Spatial Tactics used by Jewish People during the Nazi Occupation (1939-1945) in Warsaw.”

His research is focused on the spatiality of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, including how spaces were used by Jewish people to survive during World War II resistance both inside and outside the Warsaw ghetto to hide and move about. The dissertation will also examine the rules that governed people’s living situations and movements, and how urban space and architecture enabled the various techniques of surviving in the ghetto and on the “Aryan” side of Warsaw. His research intends to shed light on the history of these daily struggles for survival and resistance conducted by Jewish people through spatial strategies that were only possible thanks to the specificities of Warsaw as a large city.

He said he applied for the fellowship so that he could integrate testimony from the Visual History Archive into his research. “The audiovisual material is really important and the archive is really impressive,” Zdanowicz said.

Zdanowicz said watching testimony (in Polish, English and French) of Holocaust survivors who lived in Warsaw during the war has provided him with details that he hasn’t found in his other research.

“The survivors are talking about their life before the war, so I can see which neighborhood they were living in and if their apartment was in the ghetto or on the other side, if they had to move, and how it influenced their trajectories and chances at life,” Zdanowicz said. “For me it’s really interesting that the people are talking about how the hiding places were constructed, with which materials. Yesterday I saw the plan of one hiding place which was really impressive.”

The testimonies have made his understanding of his topic more complex, Zdanowicz said, and watching them has been the most rewarding part of his fellowship. “It’s a great opportunity for me to be here,” he said.