An Afternoon with Dr. Robin Judd

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***Please note: This event will take place at the Books & Books in Coral Gables at 265 Aragon Ave. Tickets are FREE and books will be available for purchase at the event. Want your copy early or can't make it in-person?

Facing the harrowing task of rebuilding a life in the wake of the Holocaust, many Jewish survivors, community and religious leaders, and Allied soldiers viewed marriage between Jewish women and military personnel as a way to move forward after unspeakable loss. Proponents believed that these unions were more than just a ticket out of war-torn Europe: they would help the Jewish people repopulate after the attempted annihilation of European Jewry.
Historian Robin Judd, whose grandmother survived the Holocaust and married an American soldier after liberation, introduces us to the Jewish women who lived through genocide and went on to wed American, Canadian, and British military personnel after the war. She offers an intimate portrait of how these unions emerged and developed--from meeting and courtship to marriage and immigration to life in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom--and shows how they helped shape the postwar world by touching thousands of lives, including those of the chaplains who officiated their weddings, the Allied authorities whose policy decisions structured the couples' fates, and the bureaucrats involved in immigration and acculturation. The stories Judd tells are at once heartbreaking and restorative, and she vividly captures how the exhilaration of the brides' early romances coexisted with survivor's guilt, grief, and apprehension at the challenges of starting a new life in a new land.

Ohio State University Professor Robin E. Judd is a specialist in Jewish, transnational, and gender history, with particular interests in Holocaust studies, the history of antisemitism, the history of religion, the history of leadership, and the history of migration. In recognition of her work in Holocaust studies, Governor Dewine appointed her to Ohio’s Holocaust and Genocide Memorial and Education Commission in 2021.
Judd currently serves as the President of the Association for Jewish Studies, the largest international learned society and professional organization representing Jewish studies. She also serves as the Vice Chair of the Leo Baeck Institute’s Advisory Board, and is on the Hadassah Brandeis Institute’s Academic Review committee, and the Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook’s Editorial Board. She has previously held roles as the AJS’ VP of Programming, VP of Publications, and Chair of the Governance Committee, the American Editor of the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, and the President of the Columbus Jewish Day School. She has received two leadership awards and was a participant of the President and Provost’s Leadership Initiative at the Ohio State University. Judd has received several fellowships and grants, including an ACLS, Hadassah Brandeis Institute Senior Fellowship Award, an NEH summer stipend, the College of Humanities' Virginia Hull Research Award, and the Coca Cola grant for Critical Difference.

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