I am the Special Chair for Central European Studies, Assistant Professor of Judaism & Diaspora Studies and Director of the Austria Centre Leiden. From 2025-2030, I am the Principal Investigator of “A Century of Care: Invisible Work and Early Childcare in central and eastern Europe, 1905-2004” or CARECENTURY, a project funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant. I am a historian of eastern Europe, the global Jewish experience throughout historical time and the significant Jewish diasporas unleased from the lands between Berlin and Moscow as a result of the Holocaust, World War II and postwar events. I received my doctorate in late modern European history with a designated emphasis in Jewish Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014. Since then, I have taught courses on modern European history, central and Eastern Europe, Jewish Studies and Religious Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Tulane University and the Université libre de Bruxelles. My book, Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the “Ethnic Revolution” in Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1936-1946, is based on my prize-winning doctoral dissertation was published by the 'Modern Jewish Experience' series at Indiana University Press in 2023. My second book, The Other Holocaust: Care, Children and the Jewish Catastrophe is under advanced contract at Indiana University Press.

More information about Sarah Cramsey

I am the Special Chair for Central European Studies, Assistant Professor of Judaism & Diaspora Studies and Director of the Austria Centre Leiden. From 2025-2030, I am the Principal Investigator of “A Century of Care: Invisible Work and Early Childcare in central and eastern Europe, 1905-2004” or CARECENTURY, a project funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant.

I am a historian of eastern Europe, the global Jewish experience throughout historical time and the significant Jewish diasporas unleased from the lands between Berlin and Moscow as a result of the Holocaust, World War II and postwar events. I received my doctorate in late modern European history with a designated emphasis in Jewish Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014. Since then, I have taught courses on modern European history, central and Eastern Europe, Jewish Studies and Religious Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Tulane University and the Université libre de Bruxelles. My book, Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the “Ethnic Revolution” in Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1936-1946, is based on my prize-winning doctoral dissertation was published by the 'Modern Jewish Experience' series at Indiana University Press in 2023. My second book, The Other Holocaust: Care, Children and the Jewish Catastrophe is under advanced contract at Indiana University Press.

Fields of interest

I study the history of central and eastern Europe in the modern period as well as the Jewish experience in this region and beyond throughout historical time. I am interested in the concept of diaspora, migrations in the modern period, notions of belonging (to a territory or to a people) and otherness, the Holocaust and what came after it and the history of early childcare in the lands between Salzburg, St. Petersburg and Sarajevo in the 20th century. 

I welcome the opportunity to work with undergraduates and graduate students interested in religious studies, Jewish history and the modern historical experience of the diverse populations within central and eastern Europe and their diasporas.

Research

My first book, Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the “Ethnic Revolution” in Poland and Czechoslovakia (Indiana University Press, 2023) utilizes documents in seven languages from archives across three continents while merging intellectual, diplomatic and migration histories. It explores explores how the Jewish citizens rooted in interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia became the ideal citizenry for a post–World War II Jewish state in the Middle East. I ask, how did new interpretations of Jewish belonging emerge and gain support amongst Jewish and non-Jewish decision makers exiled from wartime east central Europe and the powerbrokers surrounding them?  
 
Usually, the creation of the State of Israel is cast as a story that begins with Herzl and is brought to fulfillment by the Holocaust. To reframe this trajectory, Uprooting the Diaspora draws on a vast array of historical sources to examine what she calls a "transnational conversation" carried out by a small but influential coterie of Allied statesmen, diplomats in international organizations, and Jewish leaders who decided that the overall disentangling of populations in postwar east central Europe demanded the simultaneous intellectual and logistical embrace of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as a territorial nationalist project. 

Uprooting the Diaspora slows down the chronology between 1936 and 1946 to show how individuals once invested in multi-ethnic visions of diasporic Jewishness within east central Europe came to define Jewishness primarily in ethnic terms. This revolution in thinking about Jewish belonging combined with a sweeping change in international norms related to population transfers and accelerated, deliberate postwar work on the ground in the region to further uproot Czechoslovak and Polish Jews from their prewar homes.  

Uprooting the Diaspora won the 2024 Kulczycki Prize for the “Best Book in Polish Studies” from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, was named a finalist for the 2024 Ernst Fraenkel Prize for the “Best Book on the Holocaust” from the Wiener Holocaust Library in London and won a pre-publication Jordan Schnitzer Award from the Association for Jewish Studies.

My second book, The Other Holocaust: Care, Children and the Jewish Catastrophe, uses unique and original sources to identify the voices, spaces and materials linked to care of the very young as well as innovative visual, material and conceptual methodologies to systematically visualize how caretakers sustained the youngest victims and the smallest survivors across the World War II and the Holocaust to either the moment of their premature deaths or to their postwar lives. The Other Holocaust reconfigures what we think we know about the Jewish catastrophe and the seemingly-timeless but always-contingent process of nurturing the youngest in our collective midsts across historical time. It is under contract with Indiana University Press and will be published as both a trade and academic book.

Finally, from 2025-2030, I am the Principal Investigator of a Starting Grant from the European Research Council entitled “A Century of Care: Invisible Work and Early Childcare in central and eastern Europe, 1905-2004.” Along with my team of doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers, I explore how caretakers rooted in families, communities and broader societies nurture very young children during their earliest and most precarious months; and, how have care practices changed across different peoples,states and political economies during the dynamic 20th century. We answer these entangled questions with a comparative study of early child care in central and eastern Europe during the period 1905- 2004. While the birthing and nurturing of children seem timeless, caretaking and the often-invisible work supporting it are historically and contextually contingent. The late Habsburg Empire and, after 1918, six of its successor states offer an ideal laboratory to explore how care related to the very young was impacted by changing political, social, economic, and cultural circumstances in the modern period. Moreso than any other transnational region in the 20th century, political entities in this hyper-diverse territory took on many forms (from imperial, liberal, fascist and socialist to capitalist, democratic, isolationist and integrationist). In this ethnically and religiously heterogeneous region, the care of fetuses, newborns and toddlers continued during depressions, total wars, genocides, displacements and unsettling revolutions. This project is the first to study care practices related to the very young systematically and also conceptualize the historical transfigurations related to both private and public caretaking over a broad space and time.

Grants and awards

2024                European Research Council Starting Grant for project “CARECENTURY”
2022/24          Research Award from the Elise Mathilde Fund, Leiden Univesity Fund
2022:               Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award from the Assoc. of Jewish Studies
2021:                KNAW Early Career Partnership
2020:               Chargé de recherches, Le Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (declined)
2018:                Franklin Postdoctoral Research Grant, American Philosophical Association
2016/17:          Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, The Simon Wiesenthal Institute in Vienna
2016/17:          Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, The Czech Academy of Science (declined)
2016:                Postdoctoral Research Grant, German Historical Institute in Warsaw
2015:                Radomír Luža Prize for best dissertation in Austrian/Czechoslovak Studies
2013/14:          John L. Simpson Memorial Research Fellowship, Univ. of California, Berkeley
2008/14:         Multiple Foreign Language Area Studies Awards, U.S. Dept. of Education
2012/13:          Fellowship in East European Studies, American Council of Learned Societies
2011/12:          Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Award, Fulbright-Hays Program
2011/12:          Dissertation Research Award, The  Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
2011:                Rabbi T. Levy Tribute Fellowship for research at the American Jewish Archives
2009:               American Council of Learned Societies, East European Studies Conference Grant
2006:               Auschwitz Jewish Center Summer Scholar Program, Oświęcim, Poland
2006:               Master’s thesis awarded distinction, Oxford University
2005/06:         Full scholarship for Masters of Studies, Oxford Ctr. for Hebrew and Jewish Studies
2004/05:         Research Fellowship, Fulbright Commission to the Czech Republic
2004:                Undergr aduate Honors Thesis in History awarded Highest Honors
2003/04:          National Security Education Program (NSEP) Boren Fellowship to Czechia

Curriculum Vitae

Educational Record

Ph.D. (2014)
History; University of California, Berkeley, USA
Designated Emphasis in Jewish Studies
Fields: Late Modern European History, Jewish History and Political Science
 
M.A. (2010)
History; University of California, Berkeley, USA

M.St. (2006)
Jewish Studies; Oxford University, Oxford, England
 
B.A. (2004)
History and Religious Studies; The College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA

Academic Appointments and Professional Experience

2022-:              Professor by Special Appointment for Central European Studies; Leiden University
2022-:              Director; Leiden Austria Centre
2020-:              Assistant Professor in Judaism and Diaspora Studies, Leiden (with tenure, 2022)
2020:                Research Fellow in History, Université libre de Bruxelles
2016/20:          Professor of Practice, Department of Jewish Studies, Tulane University
2015/18:          Visiting Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley Summer Abroad to PL, CZ, DE
2015/16:          Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Jewish Studies, Tulane University
2014/15:          Visiting Lecturer, History Department, University of California, Berkeley
2012:                Co-leader of academic trip to Israel, Bing Int’l Studies Program, Stanford Univ.
2006/07:          Assistant to the Dean, National War College, U.S. Department of Defense
2006:                Educational Outreach Officer, Auschwitz Jewish Center; Oświęcim, Poland
2004:                International Visiting Scholar, European Humanities University; Minsk, Belarus

Key publications

Books

Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the “Ethnic Revolution” in Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1936-1946 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2023).

Articles

“Uprooted Families: Caretaking, Belonging and Inheritance during and after Displacement,” An introduction to a special issue of the International Migration Review, co-edited by Sarah A. Cramsey and Holly Reed (accepted, published online in 2024 and in print 2025.

“It was easier with a child than without: Creating and Caring for Polish Jewish Families in the wartime Soviet Union, 1939-1946,” Polin: Childhood, Children and Childrearing in Eastern Europe, Volume 36, edited by Natalia Aleksiun, Antony Polonsky and Francois Guesnet (2024): 244-266. 

“Divine Struggles: Writing Histories of the Jewish Experience that Are Sensitive to Religious Sensitivities,” Journal of Religious History, Volume 46/Issue 4 (December 2022): 707-725.

 “Jan Masaryk and the Palestinian Solution: Solving the German, Jewish, and Statelessness Questions in East-Central Europe,” S:I.M.O.N (Shoah: Intervention, Methods, Documentation),Vol. 5, No. 2 (2018): 4-25. 

“Timing is Everything: Changing Norms of Minority Rights and the Making of a Polish Nation-State,” co-authored with Jason Wittenberg, Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 49, No. 11 (September 2016): 1480-1512.

“‘The Most Significant Spot in Europe’: How the ‘Ethnic Revolution' and thousands of Polish Jews arrived in Náchod, Czechoslovakia in 1946,” in Polish and German translation, in T. Buchen, M. Keck-Szajbel, K. Kowalski (eds.), Demographic changes in Poland, Germany and Europe: History, Linkages and New Research Perspectives (Interdisciplinary Polish Studies, Vol. 2, 2014).

“Saying Kaddish in Czechoslovakia: Memorialization, the Jewish tragedy and the tryzna,” The Journal of  Modern Jewish Studies (Volume 7, Issue 1, 2008): 35-50.

Reviews

Andrew Kornbluth, The August Trials: The Holocaust and Postwar Justice in Poland (Harvard Univ. Press, 2021), Austrian History Yearbook (2024): 1–3.

Natalia Aleksiun, Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021), Slavic Review, 81(4) (2022): 1072-1073.

J.J. Kulczycki, Belonging to the Nation: Inclusion and Exclusion in the Polish-German Borderlands 1939-1951 (Harvard Univ. Press: 2016) English Historical Review, Volume 133, Issue 560 (2018): 228-230.

Tara Zahra, The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World  (W.W. Norton & Co.: 2016), Contemporary Austrian Studies, Volume 26 (2017): 279-285.

Publications

Activities