Lauren Fedewa

Lauren Fedewa is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History and the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto, specializing in Holocaust and genocide studies, modern Jewish history, and modern European history. She received her B.A. in History and Germanic Studies from the University of Maryland (2015) and her M.A. in History from the University of Vermont (2018). Her dissertation, “‘We were always one step away from death, always afraid’: Jewish Women and Girls ‘Passing’ as Polish Christian Forced Laborers in Germany during the Holocaust” (expected June 2026), explores the convergences and divergences in Polish and Jewish wartime experiences by foregrounding the narratives of Jewish women and girls who attempted to survive by passing as Polish Christian civilian forced laborers in the German “Old Reich.” Fedewa has received numerous fellowships and awards, including a doctoral fellowship at the Women and the Holocaust International Study Center at Moreshet (2025/2026), the Sosland Foundation Fellowship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2025), the Sharon Abramson Grant from Northwestern University’s Holocaust Education Foundation (2025), and the Claims Conference Saul Kagan Fellowship in Advanced Shoah Studies (2022–2024). From 2021 to 2022, she worked as a research contractor for the USHMM on the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 (Volumes V and VII). Her forthcoming publication, “‘The main thing is to get into the Reich’: Jewish Women and Girls ‘Passing’ as Polish Civilian Laborers in German Transit Camps in Occupied Poland”, will appear as a chapter in Bodies and Borders: Papers from the 26th Workshop on the History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites (Metropol). 

Lauren is currently completing a dissertation titled Jewish Women and Girls ‘Passing’ as Polish Christian Forced Laborers in Germany during the Holocaust under the supervision of Professor Doris Bergen.