Dr. John C. Swanson, Guerry Professor of History, shared his current research at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University
On February 25, Dr. Swanson gave a lecture at Central European University in Budapest about his current research project, titled “Lili’s Album: Lili Jacob, Bilky, and the Auschwitz Album.” “Lili’s Album” is a triple biography of Lili Jacob (the woman who found the Auschwitz Album in 1945), her home village of Bilky (today in Ukraine), and the Auschwitz Album itself. The Album contains the only photographs of Jews arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Dr. Swanson’s project is a microhistory that investigates life at the local level from voices of specific individuals, places, and things. The stories of Lili, her village, and the Album are themselves fascinating and add much to our knowledge of the region and of the twentieth century, yet the methodology of microhistory also helps complicate as well as complement more common narratives of the Holocaust, of East Central Europe, and of the modern world. Dr. Swanson is working with traditional top-down sources, but also using material from Lili and other survivors. (Lili did not write a memoir. She gave two interviews during her lifetime.) He reads personal sources, such as birth records, school records, census reports, etc. in order to better understand how people (Jews, Ukrainians, Hungarians, etc. in Transcarpathia) understood their own world. The objective is to give a voice to those who are often not seen, heard, or remembered.
Dr. Swanson is currently on leave from UTC as a Senior Core Fellow at Central European University in Budapest. He will return to UTC in Fall 2026.