Women Represented in the Collections: Lucy S. Dawidowicz
by Ilana Rossoff, Reference Services Research Intern, Center for Jewish History

Lucy S. Dawidowicz (1915-1990) was a Jewish-American historian well-known for her polemical writings on the devastation of the Nazi genocide and the historical rise of Christian and German anti-Semitism.

Dawidowicz, born Lucy Schildkret to immigrants of Eastern Europe in New York City,  was immersed in the world of Yiddish secular culture and politics and had little contact with religious Judaism. After college, she was advised to enroll in the Aspirantur graduate program of the Vilna YIVO, where she studied Yiddish during the city’s last year before Nazi occupation. Dawidowicz went back to Eastern Europe after the Holocaust to work in displaced persons’ camps and was compelled to engage deeper with the history and outcome of the Holocaust. She was a historical researcher for the American Jewish Committee from 1948-1960, and in 1975 published her best-selling The War Against the Jews 1933-1945 (1975).

A leftist in her youth, Dawidowicz would later become a staunch conservative, anti-Communist, and an opponent of feminism. Though a hallmark text for the public, The War Against the Jews was not taken seriously by academic historians on the basis of Dawidowicz’s lack of training in historical research. However, others point to the fact that little credence was paid to any of the women historians of her time.

The American Jewish Historical Society here at the Center for Jewish History hold the Lucy S. Dawidowicz papers, which contain dozens of boxes of her writings, materials and notes from her research, correspondence with family members and professional contacts, as well as pictures from her time in Vilna. Click here to view the finding aid.

Some of her best-known writings include:

• Politics in a Pluralist Democracy (1963—Co-authored with Leon J. Goldstein)
• For Max Weinrich: Studies in Jewish Languages, Literature, and Society (1964—Co-Editor) 
• The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe (1967)
• The War Against the Jews 1933-1945 (1975) 
• A Holocaust Reader (1976)
• The Jewish Presence: Essays on Identity and History (1977) 
• The Holocaust and the Historians (1981) 
• On Equal Terms: Jews in America 1881-1981 ( 1982) 
• From That Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938-1947 (1989) 
• What is the Use of Jewish History? (1992-PubIished posthumously)

To learn more about Lucy S. Dawidowicz and search the partner collections, click here.