Kobi Kabalek
Kobi Kabalek
Biography:
I earned my Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia, with a dissertation on “The Rescue of Jews and the Memory of Nazism in Germany” (2013). In 2014-2017 I was a post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as part of the ERC project “Experience, Judgment, and Representation of WWII in an Age of Globalization,” and examined conflicting perspectives concerning the war in Mandatory Palestine and their impact on the postwar historiography of Israel and Zionism. My research focuses on historical perceptions, moral sentiments, and memory in film, literature, auto/biography, oral narratives, art, etc., in German, Israeli, and global Holocaust history. I currently explore marginalized and extreme phenomena in Holocaust testimonies, historical writing, and popular culture – with special attention to the role of fantasy, imagination, and horror – and their impact on our understanding and representation of the Holocaust.
Recent Courses:
- JST/GER 83: First Year Seminar – German Reactions to the Holocaust: From the Nazi Years to the Present
- JST/GER 128N: The Holocaust in Film and Literature
- JST/HIST 195/GER 123: Genocide in Global Perspectives:
- 20th Century and Beyond
Education Details:
Publications:
Rescue and Remembrance: Imagining the German Collective after Nazism (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2025).
“No Moment of Peace: Terror, Panic, and Horror in Responses to Nazi Violence against Jews, 1933 and 1938,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 40: 1 (2026): 39-55.
(with Stefanie Fischer), “Emotions and Holocaust Studies – An Introduction,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 40: 1 (2026): 2-8.
“‘Trained Incapacity’: German Conceptions of the Holocaust and the ‘Fight against Antisemitism’ after 7 October 2023,” the Roundtable on Gaza and Genocide Studies, Journal of Genocide Research 28: 3 (2026): 665-676.
“‘The Exception Proves the Rule’ in the Memory of the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ in Israel,” Journal of Israeli History 43: 1 (2025): 1-23.
“Between Nationalism and Internationalism: Robert Weltsch and the Colonial Dilemma in WWII Palestine,” AJS Review 48: 1 (2024): 77-99.
(with Nimrod Zinger) “Angels of Destruction (Mal’akhei Ḥabalah): Two Millennia of Jewish Horror,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 17 (2023): 1-26.
(with Ella Falldorf) “Meaningful Work: Cultural Frameworks of Forced Labour in Accounts of Nazi Concentration Camp Inmates,” German History 41: 1 (2023): 41-66.
“‘Jungle Law Reigned among the Prisoners’: The Meaning of Cannibalism in the Testimonies of Nazi Concentration Camps’ Survivors,” Heritage, Memory and Conflict Journal 3 (2023): 71-74.
“‘Other Germans’: Exceptions and Rules in the Memory of Rescuing Jews in Postwar Germany,” Central European History 55: 3 (2022): 390-409.
“Monsters in the Testimonies of Holocaust Survivors,” in Iris Idelson-Shein and Christian Wiese, eds., Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History: From the Middle Ages to Modernity (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 134-153.
