Kimberly Partee Allar is now a Ph.D. Candidate in Holocaust and Modern European History at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Partee Allar received her BA in History at Amherst College in Amherst, MA. For her EHRI fellowship at Yad Vashem, she is conducting research on her dissertation, ‘Lessons in Terror and Death: Comparative Studies in the Training of Holocaust Perpetrators’, which focuses on the methodological, psychological, and ideological training of concentration camp guards from 1933-1945, taking into account gender, age, and ethnicity.

Ms. Partee Allar has presented extensively on her project at various conferences and workshops including:

• The 9th Biennial Conference of the International Association of Genocide Scholars in Buenos Aires, Argentina;
• Aftermath: The Politics of Memory Conference at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia;
• The 2nd Biennial War Crimes Conference in London, England;
• The Seventh Annual Danyliw Research Seminar on Contemporary Ukrainian Studies in Ottawa, Canada.

Ms. Partee Allar has served as a lectrice at the Université de Bourgogne in Dijon, France, and also held a fellowship with the Auschwitz Jewish Center. She took part in the Munich University Summer Academy “German Sources and Archives of Holocaust History”.

During her time at Yad Vashem, Partee Allar will be using the museum’s extensive collection of captured German documents from concentration camps, post-war investigations by the Soviet Security Apparatuses collected from 1944 to the late 1970s, as well as Israel’s own investigations into Nazi crimes and criminals. Her project will examine the recruitment and training of concentration camp guards in Nazi Germany by focusing on the Totenkopfverbände of Dachau, the Aufseherinnen of Ravensbrück, and the Wachmannschaften of Trawniki. While the history of the Nazi perpetrators has been thoroughly researched, information on the female and Soviet employees of the SS within the concentration camp system remains scarce. Partee’s comparative study will expand the understanding of how perpetrators transitioned from civilians into political soldiers, paying specific attention to the differences that arose due to gender and racial issues.

Ms. Partee Allar can be contacted at kpartee@clarku.edu.