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Long before their country joined the war, American aid workers undertook rescue efforts abroad. Who were these women and men who sought to save lives? The conversation between Debórah Dwork and Dan Stone will explore the operatives’ experiences, illuminate the moral questions they encountered, the devastating decisions they faced, and the role of unpredictable and irrational factors on the ground, at a particular moment, in shaping individual fates. The conversation will take the audience on a journey through five major cities—Prague, Vilna, Shanghai, Marseille, and Lisbon—where these courageous workers navigated overwhelming challenges and dangerous circumstances to aid those in desperate need. And it will consider the wealth of archival documents — letters, diaries, memos, reports — that offers an intimate lens on these unknown heroes who risked everything to provide safe havens from persecution.
Debórah Dwork is the Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center – CUNY. Pathbreaking in her early oral recording of Holocaust child survivors, Debórah weaves their narratives into the history she writes. She is also a leading authority on university education in this field: she envisioned and actualised the first doctoral program specifically in Holocaust History and Genocide Studies. Debórah has received numerous honours, including the HEF Distinguished Achievement Award in Holocaust Studies (2024), the Annetje Fels-Kupferschmidt Award (2022) bestowed by the Dutch Auschwitz Committee, and the INoGS Lifetime Achievement Award (2020).
This event was part of the international conference, Beyond Camps and Forced Labour: current international research on survivors of Nazi persecution, 7 January – 9 January 2026, held at Birkbeck, University of London, and The Wiener Holocaust Library, London.