Institute of Contemporary History

Research interests

• Inclusive History of Central Europe; Modern Jewish history; Modern Romani history; History of Migration and Refugees

Education

• Since 2018: student of Romani studies, Charles university, BA programme
• 1997–2003: Charles University, History (Ph.D.)
• 1991–97: Charles University, History (Mgr.)
• 1991–96: Charles University, German studies (Mgr.)

Employment

• Since 2017: head of the Inclusive History Research Group at the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague
• Since 2016: head of the steering committee of the Prague Forum for Romani Histories at the Institute of Contemporary History
• Since 2015: together with Michal Frankl editor of the Židé-dějiny-paměť (Jews, History, Memory) book series published by Nakladatelství Lidové noviny (NLN)
• Since 2012: researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History
• Since 1999: Professor of Modern Jewish History at New York University, Prague campus
• Since 1998: visiting lecturer, Charles University in Yiddish, modern Jewish History, history of refugees and citizenship, the Holocaust
• 2004–06: researcher at the Terezín Initiative Institute, Prague
• 1992–97: student research assistant at the Department of Jewish Studies, the Institute of Contemporary History, Prague

Research projects

• 2019–23: Genocide, Postwar Migration and Social Mobility: Entangled Experiences of Roma and Jews (Excellence Grant, Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, no. 19-26638X, head of the project)
• 2018: Zionists on Trial? The Slánský Affair and the Dynamics of Czechoslovak Stalinism (ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowships 2018, together with Chad Bryant and Diana Dumitru)
• 2016–17: History of the Jews of Central Europe: The Bohemian Lands (Fritz Thyssen Foundation grant, 20.15.0.075GE, head of the project)
• 2016–18: Inclusion of the Jewish Population in Postwar Czechoslovakia and Poland (Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, no. 16-01775Y, head of the project)
• 2010–13: Hope Close to the Border: Jews in the Polish and Czechoslovak Border Regions after World War II (Freie Universität, Berlin; Humboldt Scholarship for Experienced Researchers)
• 2007–09: The “Jewish Question” in the European Context (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Volkswagen Stiftung, member of the research team)
• 2004–06: Jewish Refugees to and from the Bohemian Lands (Terezín Initiative Institute, Grant Agency of the Czech Academy of Sciences, head of the project)

Study and Research Stays Abroad, Awards

• 2022: Otakar Fischer Award for 2022 (together with Hillel Kieval) for the book Zwischen Prag und Nikolsburg. Jüdisches Leben in den böhmischen Ländern (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020)
• September – November 2021: Research Fellowship at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam, funded by Humboldt Scholarship
• December 2015–June 2016: Visiting Scholar, University of Chicago, Department of History
• 2013: Otto Wichterle Award, the Czech Academy of Sciences
• August 2013: Summer Research Workshop: The Landscapes of the Uprooted: Refugees and Exiles in Postwar Europe, at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
• 2012: Outstanding Academic Title for 2012 for Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia. Current Reviews for Academic Libraries
• September 2010–August 2011, January 2013–June 2013: Humboldt Scholarship for Experienced Researchers, Osteuropa-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
• 2005–06: Award of Margarita Pazi, Moshe and Margarita Pazi Foundation, Tel Aviv
• January 2005–June 2005: University of Basel (Bundesstipendium der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft)
• 2001–02: PhD scholarship from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, New York
• September 1998–June 1999: Oxford University (OSI/FCO Chevening Scholarship Scheme)
• September 1994–June 1995: Universität Wien (ÖAD)
• March 1994–July 1994: Universität Münster (DAAD)

 Positions and membership in organizations

• since 2021: member of the editorial board of East European Jewish Affairs
• since 2020: member of the academic board of The Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow
• since 2020: member of the academic board of the PhD program Jewish Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University
• since 2016: member of the steering committee of CEFRES, Prague
• since 2016, newly elected in 2019 and 2022: Officer-at-Large, Czechoslovak Studies Association
• since 2019: member of the academic board of the NLN publishing house and Ďějiny a současnost (ĎaS – Past and present)
• 2007–2020: on the editorial board of Judaica Bohemiae
• 2017–2021: on the editorial board of the Prague Journal of Contemporary History
• 2018–2020: member of the editorial board of Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)
• 2018–19: member of the committee established by the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno for the preparation of the architectural competition for the memorial in Lety (site of a “Gypsy” concentration camp during World War II)
• since 2015: member of the Association of Jewish Studies
• since 2012: member of the Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies

Publications

Books

• with Kamil Kijek (eds.), Jewish Lives under Communism. New Perspectives. Rutgers University Press, 2022.
• with Hillel Kieval (eds.), Prague and Beyond. Jews in the Bohemian Lands. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. (in German: Zwischen Prag und Nikolsburg: Jüdisches Leben in den böhmischen Ländern. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020; in Czech: Židé v českých zemích. Společná cesta dějinami. Praha: NLN, 2022.)
• with Eliyana Adler (eds.), Jewish and Romani Families in the Holocaust and its Aftermath. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020.
• with David Rechter (eds.), Židé, nebo Němci? Německy mluvící Židé v poválečném Československu, Polsku a Německu. Prague: NLN, 2019.
• Andreas Reinke, Kateřina Čapková, Michal Frankl, Piotr Kendziorek, and Ferenc Laczó, Die “Judenfrage“ in Ostmitteleuropa: Historische Pfade und politisch-soziale Konstellationen. Reihe: Studien zum Antisemitismus in Europa, Bd. 8, Berlin: Metropol, 2015.
• with Michal Frankl: Unsichere Zuflucht: Die Tschechoslowakei und ihre Flüchtlinge aus NS-Deutschland und Österreich 1933–1938. Translated by Kristine Kallert. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2012.Published in Czech as Nejisté útočiště: Československo a uprchlíci před nacismem, 1933–1938. Prague: Paseka, 2008.
• Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia. Translated by Derek and Marzia Paton. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012.Published in Czech as Češi, Němci, Židé? Národní identita Židů v Čechách, 1918–1938. Prague: Paseka, 2005, 2nd, rev. edn, 2013.

Editorial work

• Adolf Ornstein, Vilma Iggersová, Karl Abeles, Sto let jedné židovské rodiny na českém venkově [ Hundred Years of a Jewish Family in Bohemian Countryside]. Edited by Kateřina Čapková. Praha: Karolinum 2022.
• Raya Czerner Schapiro and Helga Czerner Weinberg (eds.), Dopisy z Prahy 1939–1941. [Letters from Prague, 1939–41]. Czech edition edited by Kateřina Čapková. Prague: Irene Press, 2017.

Articles (a selection)

• „Erased from History. Jewish Migrants in Postwar Czechoslovakia“, in: Kateřina Čapková, Kamil Kijek (eds.), Jewish Lives under Communism New Perspectives. New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press 2022, 35-53.
• „Židé na českém venkově. Od emancipace po ztrátu domova“, in: Adolf Ornstein, Vilma Iggersová, Karl Abeles, Sto let jedné židovské rodiny na českém venkově. Praha: Karolinum, 2022, 7-25.
• “Jüdinnen und Juden in der Tschechoslowakei und der Slánský-Prozess”, in Jörg Ganzenmüller (ed.), Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland und Europa nach der Shoah. Neubeginn – Konsolidierung – Ausgrenzung (Europäische Diktaturen und ihre Überwindung, Schriften der Stiftung Ettersberg, 26). Köln/Weimar/Wien 2020, 127-136.
• “Refugees from Nazi Germany in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s: ‚In the long run, people will go down here’”, in: W. Borodziej and Joachim von Puttkamer, Immigrants and Foreigners in Central and Eastern Europe during the Twentieth Century. Routledge 2020, 73-86.
• “Asimilace: Kritika jednoho pojmu: Výklad dějin Židů v českých zemích a v Polsku po druhé světové válce,” Soudobé dějiny, 26 (2019) 1: 9–31.
• “Zuflucht für Prominente: Die Tschechoslowakei und ihre Flüchtlinge aus NS-Deutschland und Österreich,” in Detlef Brandes, Edita Ivaničková, and Jiří Pešek (eds.), Flüchtlinge und Asyl im Nachbarland: Die Tschechoslowakei und Deutschland 1933 bis 1989. Essen: Klartext, 2018, 75–88.
• “‘Já jsem nebyl moc odvážný člověk, ale někdy jsem tu svoji zbabělost překonal’: Bedřich Loewenstein v rozhovoru s Kateřinou Čapkovou,” Soudobé dějiny, 25 (2018) 1–2: 23–34.
• “Between Expulsion and Rescue: The Transports for German-speaking Jews of Czechoslovakia in 1946, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 32 (2018) 1: 66–92.
• “Dilemmas of Minority Politics: Jewish Migrants in Post-War Czechoslovakia and Polan,” in Françoise S. Ouzan and Manfred Gerstenfeld (eds.), Postwar Jewish Displacement and Rebirth, 1945–1967 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 63–75.
• With David Rechter, “Germans or Jews? German-Speaking Jews in Post-War Europe: An Introduction,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 62 (November 2017): 69–74.
• “Beyond the Assimilationist Narrative: Historiography on the Jews of the Bohemian Lands and Poland after the Second World War,” Studia Judaica 37 (2016) 1: 129–55.
• “Judaïsme et nationalisme dans les correspondances d’Otokar Fischer,”  in Marie-Odile Thirouin (ed.), “À vous de coeur…”: André Spire et Otokar Fischer 1922–1938. Prague: Musée de la littérature tchèque (PNP), 2016: 20–53. (Published in Czech as “Úvahy o židovství a nacionalismu v korespondenci Otokara Fischera,” in Marie-Odile Thirouinová (ed.), “Ze srdce váš…”: André Spire a Otokar Fischer 1922–1938. Prague: Památník národního písemnictví, 2016: 18–40.)
• “Národně nespolehliví?! Německy hovořící Židé v Polsku a v Československu bezprostředně po druhé světové válce,” Soudobé dějiny, 22 (2015) 1–2: 80–101.
• “Když jde o prospěch českého národa, antisemitismus to není… Polemika s texty Aleše Hamana, Jiřího Homoláče, Jana Mareše a Jana Randáka”, Česká literatura2014/3: 455–62.
• “Germans or Jews? German-Speaking Jews in Poland and Czechoslovakia after World War II,” Jewish History Quarterly 2013/2: 348–62.
• “Die ‘Judenfrage’ in der Frühphase der tschechischen Nationalbewegung,“ in Manfred Hettling, Michael G. Müller and Guido Hausman (eds), Die “Judenfrage” – ein europäisches Phänomen?, Berlin: Metropol, 2013: 247–66.
• “Anti-Jewish Discourses in the Czech National Movement: Havlíček, Neruda, and Kapper,” Judaica Bohemiae 46 (2011) 2: 77-93.
• “Ich akzeptiere den Komplex, der ich bin: Zionisten um Franz Kafka,” in Peter Becher, Steffen Höhne and Marek Nekula, Kafka und Prag: Literatur-, kultur-, sozial- und sprachhistorische Kontexte (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2012): 81–95.
• “Raum und Zeit als Faktoren der nationalen Identifikation der Prager Juden,” in Peter Becher and Anna Knechtel (eds.), Praha – Prag 1900 – 1945: Literaturstadt zweier Sprachen, (Passau: Karl Stutz, 2010): 21–31.
• “Die jüdische Glaubengemeinschaft,” in Martin Schulze-Wessel and Martin Zückert (eds.), Handbuch der Religions- und Kirchengeschichte der böhmischen Länder und Tschechiens im 20. Jahrhundert, (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009): 187–208.
• “Mit Tribuna gegen das Prager Tagblatt: Der deutsch-tschechische Pressekampf um die jüdischen Leser in Prag,” in  Sybille Schönborn (ed.), Zeitungen deutschsprachiger Minderheiten und ihr Feuilleton in Mitteleuropa bis 1939, Beiträge aus der internationalen, interdisziplinären Tagung der Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf und der Nationalen Iwan Franko Universität Lviv, Ukraine, May 2007 (Essen: Klartext, 2009): 127–40.
• Entries in The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, edited by Gershon Hundert, 2 vols. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008): “Bar Kochba Association,” 125–27; Českožidovské Listy, 302; “Czechoslovakia” (with Michal Frankl and Petr Brod), 375–81; “Richard Feder,” 503–04; “Angelo Goldstein,” 613; “Tobias Jakobovits,” 817; “Guido Kisch,” 900; “Jindřich Kohn,” 912–13; “Hayim Kugel,” 951; “Emil Margulies,” 1130; “Gustav Sicher,” 1744; “Ludvík Singer,” 1756; “Friedrich Thieberger,” 1880; “Emil Utitz,” 1953–54; “František Weidmann,” 2011; “Gustav Winter,” 2026; “Židovská Strana,” 2123–24); “Židovské Zprávy,” 2124.
• “Kafka un der jidischer teater: Di mizrach-ejropejiše jidn in di ojgn fun proger jidn,” Jerušolajmer almanach 28 (2008): 362–71. (In Yiddish)
• “Několik tváří exilu v ČSR: Každodennost péče o uprchlíky před nacismem,” Dějiny a současnost 3 (2008): 30–33.
• “Tschechentum, Deutschtum und Judentum mit den Augen einer Jüdin aus Seewiesen,” In Identität versus Integrität. Zusammenleben von Tschechen, Deutschen und Juden auf dem Gebiet des Böhmerwaldes und des Böhmischen Waldes (Pilsen: Grafia, 2007): 87–93.
• “Židovská náboženská komunita v českých zemích mezi válkami,” Religio 1, 2007: 47–68.
• “Viktor Fischl a sionismus v Čechách,” in Zdeněk Vydra (ed.), Viktor Fischl (1912–2006): Příběh českých židů ve 20. století, ed. (Pardubice: Univerzita Pardubice, 2007): 9–15.
• “Czechs, Germans, Jews – Where Is the Difference? The Complexity of National Identities of Bohemian Jews, 1918–1938,” Bohemia 46 (2006) 1: 7–14. (Published in German as Tschechisch, Deutsch, Jüdisch – wo ist der Unterschied? Komplexität von nationalen Identitäten der böhmischen Juden 1918–1938. In Marek Nekula, and Walter Koschmal (eds.), Juden zwischen Deutschen und Tschechen: Sprachliche, literarische und kulturelle Identitäten (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006): 73–84.
• “‘Nie wären wir geflüchtet’: Im Gütterwaggon aus der Slowakei in die Schweiz,” Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente (Berlin: Metropol 2005), 332–62. (Published in Czech as “‘Nikdy bychom bývali neutekli’: V nákladních vagónech ze Slovenska do Švýcarska,” Terezínské studie a dokumenty2005, 310–36.)
• “Czechoslovakia as Sanctuary for Refugees from Nazism !?” In Exile in Prague and Czechoslovakia, 1918–1938. exh. cat. (Prague: Pražská edice, 2005): 149–59.
• “Uznání židovské národnosti v Československu 1918–1938,” Český časopis historický 2004/1: 77–103.
• “Theodor Lessing – vom Außenseiter zum Symbol der antinazistischen Opposition,” in Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente (Berlin: Metropol, 2003): 11–32. (Published in Czech as “Theodor Lessing – od outsidera k symbolu protinacistické opozice,” Terezínské studie a dokumenty 2003: 45–64.)
• “Specific Features of Zionism in the Czech Lands in the Interwar Period,” Judaica Bohemiae 38 (2002): 106–59.
• “The Jewish Elite of Central Europe (The B’nai B’rith Order from the Time of the Habsburgs to the Communist Era),” in Aleš Fuchs (ed.), B’nai B’rith Renaissance Prague (Prague: Faun, 2001): 24–87.
• “Kafka a otázka židovské identity v dobovém kontextu,” Kuděj 2001/2: 42–52.
• “Jewish Elites in the 19th and 20th Centuries: The B’nai B’rith Order in Central Europe,” Judaica Bohemiae 36 (2000): 119–42.
• “Piłsudski or Masaryk? Revisionist Zionism in Czechoslovakia 1925–1940,” Judaica Bohemiae 35 (1999): 210–39.
• “Das Zeugnis von Salmen Gradowski,” in Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente (Berlin: Metropol, 1999): 105–11. (published in Czech as “Svědectví Salmena Gradowského o rodinném táboře v Birkenau,” Terezínské studie a dokumenty1998: 175–80.)

Reviews

• Celia Donert, The Rights of the Roma: The Struggle for Citizenship in Postwar Czechoslovakia. The American Historical Review, 125 (February 2020) 1: 332–33, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhz1034
• Martina Niedhammer, Nur eine “Geld-Emancipation”? Loyalitäten und Lebenswelten des Prager jüdischen Großbürgertums 1800–1867. Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 64 (2016) 1: 149–51.
• “Menšiny za komunismu: Dvě úvahy nad knihou Matěje Spurného,” Soudobé dějiny2013/1–2: 190–98.
• Ines Koeltzsch, Michaela Kuklová, and Michael Wögerbauer (eds.), Übersetzer zwischen den Kulturen: Der Prager Publizist Paul/Pavel Eisner, Bohemia 52 (2012): 168–71.
• Martin Zückert and Laura Hölzlwimmer (eds.), Religion in den böhmischen Ländern 1938–1948: Diktatur, Krieg und Gesellschaftswandel als Herausforderungen für religiöses Leben und kirchliche Organisation, H-Soz-Kult, 21 May 2008, hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-10340

Conferences and workshops organized

• Conference: Jewish Initiative and Agency under Communism Co-organized with Kamil Kijek, Semion Goldin, David Engel, and Dariusz Stola, 15–17 June 2020, University of Wrocław.
• Workshop: Commemorating the Kindertransports 80 Years On, 19 November 2018, Maisel Synagogue, Prague.
• Workshop: Stereotypical Representations of Roma and Jews in Photographs, co-organized with Helena Sadílková, 15 October 2018, CEFRES, Prague.
• Workshop: Forced Sterilization of Romani Women in the Czech(oslovak) and European Contexts: Past and Present, co-organized with Helena Sadílková, 12 June 2018, NYU in Prague.
• Workshop: Contemporary Research on the Holocaust of Roma in the Czechoslovak Context, co-organized with Helena Sadílková, 21 May 2018, Campus Hybernská, Prague.
• Conference: Tracing the Legacies of the Roma Genocide: Families as Transmitters of Experience and Memory, co-organized with Celia Donert, Eve Rosenhaft, and Helena Sadílková, 20–21 September 2017, Villa Lanna, Prague.
• Workshop: Germans or Jews? German-Speaking Jews in Post-War Europe, co-organized with David Rechter and Natalia Aleksiun, 24 August 2017, Center for Jewish History, New York
• Conference: New Approaches to the History of the Jews under Communism, co-organized with Kamil Kijek and Stephan Stach, 23–25 May 2017, Villa Lanna, Prague.
• Conference: The Holocaust and Its Aftermath from the Family Perspective, co-organized with Eliyana Adler, Ruth Leiserowitz, 15–16 March 2017, Villa Lanna, Prague.
• Conference: Czech-Jewish and Polish-Jewish Studies: (Dis)Similarities, co-organized with Marcin Wodzinski, 29–30 October 2014, Villa Lanna, Prague.

For more, please see: Academia.edu.