Research Mentor Information
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Primary Research Mentor Name: Dr. Nathan Stoltzfus
Research Mentor Preferred Pronouns: He/Him/His
When potential research assistants are reaching out via email, what is your preferred honorific?: Dr.
Contact Email (FSU Email if affiliated): nstoltzfus@fsu.edu
Position Title: Faculty
FSU College (if applicable): Arts and Sciences
FSU Department or Non-FSU Organization Affiliation: History
Headshot (optional): {Empty}

Additional Research Mentor(s)
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Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from above): Liam Wirsansky
Research Assistant Supervisor Preferred Pronouns: He/Him/His
Research Assistant Supervisor Preferred Honorific?: Mr.
Contact Email (FSU Email if affiliated): ljw16d@fsu.edu
Name of Other Faculty/Collaborator(s) (if applicable): Dr. George Williamson
Other Faculty/Collaborator(s) Preferred Pronouns: He/Him/His
Other Faculty/Collaborator(s) Preferred Honorific?: Dr.
Contact Email (FSU Email if affiliated): gwilliamson@fsu.edu

Overall Project Details
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Title of the Project: Building an Association of Rescuers to Honor Civil Courage in Hitler’s Germany
Project Keywords: History, Holocaust, Women, Jewish, Intermarriage
Are you currently looking for research assistants?: Yes
Number of Research Assistants Needed : 4
Relevant Research Assistant Major(s):
Open to all Majors

Project Location:: On FSU Main Campus
If the project location is off campus, does the research assistant(s) need to provide their own transportation?: No, the project is remote
Please select the choice that most accurately describes your expectations for the research assistant(s):: Partially Remote
Approximately how many hours a week would the research assistant(s) need to work?: 7
Roughly what time frame do you expect research assistant(s) to work?: Flexible schedule (Combination of business and outside of business. TBD between student and research mentor.)
Overall Research Project Description:
The Dorothy and Jonathan Rintels Professorship for Holocaust Studies has established a website, RosenstrasseFoundation.org, to commemorate and encourage acts of civil/ humanitarian courage (Zivilcourage). An initial step in the ongoing work of the Rosenstrasse Foundation is dedicated to the commemoration of German Jews rescued from the Holocaust through the refusal of their non-Jewish partners to divorce, in the face of continuous, enormous pressures from propaganda and the Gestapo, as well as from neighbors, colleagues and their own families of birth. Our related fields of emphasis are women’s defiance, particularly during Nazi Germany, and civil courage more generally. So often in the memory of Hitler and the Holocaust, voices of evil are magnified, given our fascination with it. The Rosenstrasse Foundation’s mission is to give resisters and rescuers the last word, not the Nazi perpetrators, and includes the following initial focus:

1) Education about the significance of the rescue of approximately 2,000 Jews through a street protest in Nazi Berlin in early 1943, which also highlights the place of women in demonstrating civil courage to defy Hitler. The Rosenstrasse Protest serves as a model and an inspiration concerning the capacity and responsibility of individuals to make a difference. This civil courage is distinguished from traditionally recognized acts of resistance, such as the military conspiracy to kill Hitler, through its public expression carried on by actions of civilians in everyday life, in order to defend their integrity and families. It is identified with what the Czech dissident Václav
Havel called “the attempt to live in the truth,” a form of defiance rooted in everyday life of civilians who defy mass conformity in order to live in light of their own consciences.

2) Honoring the memory of this rescue together with the women who displayed this important civil courage form of resistance. These protesters and other German non-Jews rescued their Jewish partners beginning with noncompliance to the regime and German society. They thwarted the Nazi dictatorship's intentions to carry out fully its fundamental objective of "racial purification" long enough for some 11,000 German Jews to survive—nearly all of Germany’s “full” Jews (in Nazi vocabulary) who survived outside of Nazi camps, without going into hiding. They received ration cards from the Reich and the Gestapo had their addresses as well.

3) Establishing a network and an association of descendants and relatives of those who experienced the Rosenstrasse protest along with others from German intermarried couples, so that these persons may get to know each other. We seek to accumulate an archive of personal narratives, documents, and texts.


Research Tasks:
Student researchers help support the foundation through their contributions, with the UROP objectives including the facilitation of the maintenance of a webpage for each family of descendants and relatives of those who experienced the Rosenstrasse Protest, or the rescue of a German Jew through intermarriage. Relatives and descendants will be engaged to build their family pages, using photos, stories, documents that relate their experiences. 

Student tasks include any or all of the following, depending upon student interests:

Identify survivors and descendants and help them establish a family webpage of stories, photos, documents.
Locate organizations, persons, or media commemorating Rosenstrasse.
Maintain and develop/design the Rosenstrasse Foundation website in all aspects.
Genealogical research to identify persons who are descended from German intermarriages who wish to document their family history on the foundation website; contact organizations for the same purpose.
Identify and announce relevant events, link articles and archives, write or edit Wikipedia articles on related topics such as intermarriages in Nazi Germany and the survival of German Jews in intermarriages.
Write articles to publish or broadcast in outlets identified by the Foundation and supported with ideas for stories from it.
Identify the ways that Germans have responded to the request from the Schroeder-Fischer government (1998-2005) to honor acts of civic courage (Zivilcourage) to build civil society, and how we could initiate forms of honoring of the Rosenstrasse Protesters.

We are thrilled that our student research assistants are the ones conducting the research and doing the related work that supports these goals!

Skills that research assistant(s) may need::
Some knowledge of web design and/or German welcomed but not required.


Mentoring Philosophy:
UROP researchers will participate in weekly meetings with Liam Wirsansky (FSU, BA, M.S., & FSU Director of Research and Development of the Rosenstrasse Foundation) who will supervise and facilitate coordinating the research and developing the needed skills and historical context for students to be successful alongside the direction of Dr. George Williamson and other student assistants that already work with the foundation.

Please provide a link to your publications, a video clip, or a website for your research project (if applicable):: Rosenstrassefoundation.org
Please add any additional information here (if applicable)::
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Roundtable times and Zoom links:
Thursday, September 7th: 6-6:30pm (https://fsu.zoom.us/j/92236214388)
Thursday, September 7th: 6:30-7pm (https://fsu.zoom.us/j/92236214388)

UROP Roundtable Recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YKzTsNJi3KkSsLTLh0VI_vBiJVuuCTY6/view?usp=sharing
Link to Powerpoint Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xkGE9vSiGoCxevuLf28wQLE-NF0gUnaAMhwNt_f0ZLU/edit?usp=sharing

UROP Program Elements
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Mentor Handbook, FAQs, and Communication: Yes
UROP Performance Evaluation: Yes
Materials Grant: Yes
UROP Poster Presentation: Yes

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Year: 2023
update url: https://cre.fsu.edu/urop-research-mentor-project-submission-portal?token=xd8IsuPI-trgRmJgXC3Mcc9AsbHIppzYBsDfev0B4h4