This autobiographical reflection by Dr. Daniela Ozacky Stern explores her personal and professional journey as a third-generation Holocaust scholar. Growing up on a strict Israeli kibbutz dominated by survivor trauma and collective commemoration, she experienced an isolated childhood marked by constant anxiety, which she later connected to intergenerational post-trauma.
Her life changed course when she transitioned to academic life in Tel Aviv and began cataloging the extensive diaries and collections of her grandfather, Chaim Lazar, a prominent partisan fighter in the Vilna forests and underground leader. Driven by deep curiosity and a sense of mission, she pursued a PhD in Jewish History at Haifa University, focusing her research on Jewish partisans in Lithuania and Belarus.
Despite encountering academic skepticism and ideological tensions—particularly regarding the historical recognition of right-wing resistance groups during her decade directing the Moreshet Archive—she established herself as an internationally recognized scholar. Traveling globally to present her research, she successfully bridged her family’s legacy with rigorous historical inquiry. Ultimately, Ozacky Stern embraces her role as a voice for the murdered and the forgotten, viewing her scholarship not merely as a profession, but as a vital lifelong duty to keep history and family memory alive.
Ozacky-Stern, D. (2021). Reflections of a Third Generation Holocaust Scholar. In J. T. Baumel-Schwartz & S. Refael (Eds.), Researchers Remember: Research as an Arena of Memory Among Descendants of Holocaust Survivors, a Collected Volume of Academic Autobiographies (pp. 379-390). Bern: Peter Lang.
