We are excited to welcome Olga Kartashova (back) to CEU Jewish Studies!
Olga is a PhD candidate at New York University and in 2025/26 will be a joint research fellow at the CEU Jewish Studies program and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies.
Olga is finishing her dissertation titled "International Networks and Jewish Efforts to Prosecute Nazi Perpetrators for Crimes in Poland (1943-1948)."
This project investigates how Jewish intellectuals, lawyers, and community leaders sought justice for crimes committed during the Holocaust, with a particular focus on Poland. It traces the continuity of activism from the interwar period, showing how Jewish individuals and organizations drew on longstanding traditions of advocacy, legal expertise, and transnational collaboration to confront unprecedented challenges during and after World War II.
Focusing on the years 1943 to 1948, the study situates postwar trials and investigations within a broader, ongoing effort to secure justice and minority rights. Rather than treating Holocaust trials as isolated episodes, it highlights their roots in earlier campaigns to shape an international legal order responsive to Jewish concerns. These initiatives included lobbying for Jewish rights in the Diaspora, mobilizing global networks, and cooperating with national and international legal institutions.
By tracing how early debates about the punishment of crimes against European Jewry evolved during the war, the research reveals how prior experiences and established relationships informed postwar strategies. In particular, it sheds light on Jewish-Polish cooperation in prosecuting perpetrators and on efforts to bring knowledge of these crimes to wider public attention.
The project is funded by La Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah doctoral scholarship 2025/26.