
©Teresa Preis/VWI
Kateřina Čapková, PhD is currently a senior researcher at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, where she will take up a full-time position in April 2025 after her research stay at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. She also teaches at NYU in Prague. Her research and teaching focus on modern Jewish history in Europe, the history of Roma and Sinti, and refugee studies. Her Czechs, Germans, Jews? won the Outstanding Academic Title Award from Choice magazine in 2012. Together with Hillel J. Kieval, she edited Prague and Beyond (2022), a history of Jews of the Bohemian lands from the early modern period to the present, also published in German, Hebrew, and Czech. In 2016, Čapková initiated the establishment of the Prague Forum for Romani Histories at the Institute of Contemporary History, which she has directed ever since. Since January 2025, the Prague Forum for Romani Histories has become one of the research centers of the Faculty of Arts at Charles University. One of the projects Čapková currently heads is www.romatestimonies.com, the world’s first systematic database of Romani and Sinti testimonies about the Second World War. In 2024, Čapková was awarded the prestigious Reimar Lüst Prize by the Humboldt Foundation and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.
CURRICULUM VITAE
Education
- from 2018, interrupted: BA in Romani Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University
- 1997–2003: PhD in Czech History, Faculty of Arts, Charles University
March 2000 – July 2000: INALCO (Paris)
September 1998 – June 1999: Oxford University, OSI/FCO Chevening Scholarship
- 1991 – 1997: Mgr. (corresponds to the MA) in History and German Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University
September 1994 – July 1995: University of Vienna, ÖAD
March 1994 – July 1994: University of Münster, DAAD
Research Stays Abroad
- October 2024 – March 2025: Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (Senior Research Fellow)
- October – December 2021: Leibniz Center for Contemporary History Potsdam (Humboldt Scholarship)
- September 2015 – June 2016: University of Chicago (Visiting Scholar)
- September 2010 – August 2011, January – June 2013: Freie Universität, Berlin (Humboldt Scholarship for Experienced Researchers)
- January – June 2005: University of Basel (Bundesstipendium der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft)
Awards
- Reimar Lüst Prize for 2024 awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation
- Otokar Fischer Prize for 2022 awarded by Adalbert Stifter Verein and Institut pro studium literatury for Zwischen Prag und Nikolsburg (together with Hillel J. Kieval)
- Otto Wichterle Award for 2013 awarded by the Czech Academy of Sciences
- Outstanding Academic Title for 2012 awarded by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries for her book Czechs, Germans, Jews?
- Margarita Pazi Prize for Research of Bohemian Jewry awarded by Margareta Pazi Foundation, Tel Aviv, 2005–2006
Research Projects (a selection)
- 2024–2028: OP JAK, member of the research team
Title: “Beyond Security: The Role of Conflict in Building Resilience” (CoRe)
- January 2024 – June 2025: Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung, Zukunft, Principal investigator
Title: “Zeugenaussagen von Roma und Sinti im Rahmen ihrer Suche nach Wiedergutmachung”
- 2019 – 2023: EXPRO Grant, Czech Grant Agency, Principal investigator
Title: “Genocide, Postwar Migration, and Social Mobility: Entangled Experiences of Roma and Jews”, 19-26638X
- 2018 – 2019: American Council of Learned Societies, Collaborative Research Fellowship
Title: “Zionists on Trial? The Slánský Affair and the Dynamics of Czechoslovak Stalinism” (together with Chad C. Bryant and Diana V. Dumitru)
- 2016 – 2018: Junior Grant, Czech Grant Agency, Principal investigator
Title: “The Inclusion of the Jewish Population in Postwar Czechoslovakia and Poland”, 16-01775Y
- 2016 – 2020: Book project funded by the Thyssen Foundation, Principal investigator
Title: “Prague and Beyond. Jews in the Bohemian Lands”, 20.15.0.075GE
- 2007 – 2009: Volkswagen Stiftung, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, member of the research team
Title: “Die „Judenfrage“ im europäischen Vergleich”
- 2004 – 2006: Grant Agency of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Principal investigator
Title: “Jewish Refugees in/from the Bohemian Lands”, 1933–1939, B8994401
Membership of committees, and editorial boards (a selection, only last 5 years)
- Academic Advisory Board, The Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow, Leipzig, since 2020, re-elected in 2024
- Editorial Board of East European Jewish Affairs, since 2021
- Czechoslovak Studies Association, Officer-at-Large, since 2016, re-elected in 2019 and 2023
- Steering Committee of the Doctoral Program in Jewish Studies, a joint program of the Faculty of Arts (Charles University) and the Czech Academy of Sciences, since 2019
- Steering Committee of the Prague Forum for Romani Histories, Head, since 2016
- Steering Committee of CEFRES, 2016–2024
- Co-editor (with Michal Frankl) of the book series Jews – History – Memory at the Lidové noviny publishing house, since 2015
- Advisory Committee of the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno in connection with the announcement of a competition for a memorial on the site of the former concentration camp in Lety u Písku, 2018–2019
Publications
Books
- Kateřina Čapková, Chad Bryant, and Diana Dumitru, The Slánský Trial. A New History, contract with OUP, forthcoming in 2025.
- Kateřina Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia. Oxford – New York: Berghahn Books, 2012, pb 2014.
Czech original: Češi, Němci, Židé? Národní identita Židů v Čechách, 1918-1938. Prague – Litomyšl: Paseka, 2005 (2nd revised ed. 2013)
Reviewed in (a selection): The Journal of Modern History, Slavic Review, H-Soz-Kult, Choice, Central European History, Religious Studies Review, Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, Bohemia, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, Český časopis historický, and Človek a spoločnosť.
- Kateřina Čapková and Michal Frankl, Unsichere Zuflucht. Die Tschechoslowakei und ihre Flüchtlinge aus NS-Deutschland 1933-1938. Vienna – Cologne – Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2012.
Czech original: Nejisté útočiště. Československo a uprchlíci před nacismem, 1933-1938. Prague – Litomyšl: Paseka, 2008. (2nd revised ed. forthcoming with the NLN publishing house, English translation in preparation)
Reviewed in (a selection): Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, Bohemia, sehepunkte, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, Český časopis historický, and Soudobé dějiny.
- Andreas Reinke, Kateřina Čapková, Michal Frankl, Piotr Kendziorek and Ferenc Laczó, Die “Judenfrage“ in Ostmitteleuropa. Historische Pfade und politisch-soziale Konstellationen. Berlin: Metropol, 2015.
Edited volumes
- Kateřina Čapková and Kamil Kijek (eds.), Jewish Lives under Communism. New Approaches. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2022.
Reviewed in: Slavic Review and CEU Review of Books.
- Eliyana Adler and Kateřina Čapková (eds.), Jewish and Romani Families in the Holocaust and its Aftermath. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2021.
Reviewed in: Critical Romani Studies.
- Kateřina Čapková and Hillel J. Kieval (eds.), Prague and Beyond. Jews in the Bohemian Lands. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
In German: Zwischen Prag und Nikolsburg. Jüdisches Leben in den böhmischen Ländern. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020.
In Czech: Židé v českých zemích. Společná cesta dějinami. Prague: NLN, 2022.
In Hebrew: פראג ומעֵ בר לה .יהודים בארצות הבוהמיות Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2024.
Reviewed in (a selection): Slavic Review, Jüdische Allgemeine, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, Brücken, Medaon, PaRDeS, Radio Prague International, LandesEcho, H-Soz-Kult, Kulturexpresso, Judaica Bohemiae, and Český časopis historický.
- Kateřina Čapková and David Rechter (eds.), Židé, nebo Němci? Německy mluvící Židé v poválečném Československu, Polsku a Německu. Prague: NLN, 2019.
Reviewed in: Judaica Bohemiae and Respekt.
Editions of memoirs and correspondence
- Jan Hauer, Moji lidi. Editors Renata Berkyová, Kateřina Čapková, Helena Sadílková. Prague: Kher, 2024.
Reviewed in: Deník N.
- Adolf Ornstein, Vilma Iggersová, and Karl Abeles, Sto let jedné židovské rodiny na českém venkově. Edited by Kateřina Čapková. Prague: Karolinum 2022. English edition in preparation.
Reviewed in: Judaica Bohemiae and Dějiny – teorie – kritika.
- Raya Czerner Schapiro and Helga Czerner Weinberg (eds.), Dopisy z Prahy 1939–1941. Czech edition edited by Kateřina Čapková. Prague: Irene Press, 2017.
Academic articles and chapters in edited volumes (a selection)
- “Kontinuität der Demütigung: Bewertung der Kriegserfahrungen von Roma und Juden in der Nachkriegstschechoslowakei,” S:I.M.O.N. (Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation) 11, 2024/1, 107–123.
- “Undone from Within: The Downfall of Rudolf Slánský and Czechoslovak-Soviet Dynamics under Stalin” (co-authored with: Chad Bryant and Diana Dumitru), Journal of Modern History 95, December 2023/4, 847–886.
- “Erased from History. Jewish Migrants in Postwar Czechoslovakia,” in Kateřina Čapková, and Kamil Kijek (eds.), Jewish Lives under Communism: New Perspectives. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press 2022, 35–53.
- “Franz Kafka et le sionisme,” Études Germaniques 75, 2020/1, 157–170.
- “Jüdinnen und Juden in der Tschechoslowakei und der Slánský-Prozess,” in Jörg Ganzenmüller (ed.), Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland und Europa nach der Shoah. Neubeginn – Konsolidierung – Ausgrenzung. Cologne–Weimar–Vienna: Böhlau, 2020, 127–136.
- “Refugees from Nazi Germany in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s: ‘In the long run, people will go down here’,” in Włodzimierz Borodziej and Joachim von Puttkamer (eds.), Immigrants and Foreigners in Central and Eastern Europe during the Twentieth Century. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020, 73–86.
- “Between Expulsion and Rescue: The Transports for German-Speaking Jews of Czechoslovakia in 1946,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, spring 2018/1, 66–92.
- “Beyond the Assimilationist Narrative: Historiography on the Jews of the Bohemian Lands and Poland after the Second World War,” Studia Judaica 19, 2016/1 (37), 129–155.
- “Judaïsme et nationalisme dans les correspondances d’Otokar Fischer,” in Marie-Odile Thirouin (ed.), «À vous de cœur…» André Spire et Otokar Fischer, 1922–1938. Prague: Musée de la littérature tchèque, 2016, 20–54.
- “Dilemmas of Minority Politics: Jewish Migrants in Post-War Czechoslovakia and Poland,” in Manfred Gerstenfeld and Françoise Ouzan (eds.), Displacement, Jewish Migration and Rebirth of Communities (1945-1967). Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2014, 63–75.
- “Germans or Jews? German-Speaking Jews in Postwar Poland and Czechoslovakia,” Jewish History Quarterly, 2013/2, 348–362.
- “Die ‘Judenfrageʻ in der Frühphase der tschechischen Nationalbewegung,” in Manfred Hettling, Michael G. Müller and Guido Hausman (eds.), Die ‘Judenfrageʻ – ein europäisches Phänomen?. Berlin: Metropol 2013, 247–266.
- “‘Ich akzeptiere den Komplex, der ich bin.‘ Zionisten um Franz Kafka,” in Peter Becher, Steffen Höhne and Marek Nekula (eds.), Kafka und Prag. Literatur-, kultur-, sozial- und sprachhistorische Kontexte. Cologne–Weimar–Vienna: Böhlau, 2012, 81–95.
- “Anti-Jewish Discourses in the Czech National Movement. Havlíček, Neruda and Kapper,” Judaica Bohemiae 46, 2011/2, 77–94.
- “Raum und Zeit als Faktoren der nationalen Identifikation der Prager Juden,” in Peter Becher and Anna Knechtel (eds.), Praha – Prag 1900–1945. Literaturstadt zweier Sprachen. Passau: Karl Stutz, 2010, 21–31.
- “Die jüdische Glaubensgemeinschaft,” in Martin Schulze-Wessel and Martin Zückert (eds.), Handbuch der Religions- und Kirchengeschichte der böhmischen Länder und Tschechiens im 20. Jahrhundert. Munich: Oldenbourg 2009, 187–208.
- “Mit Tribuna gegen das Prager Tagblatt. Der deutsch-tschechische Pressekampf um die jüdischen Leser in Prag,” in Sibylle Schönborn (ed.), Grenzdiskurse. Zeitungen deutschsprachiger Minderheiten und ihr Feuilleton in Mitteleuropa bis 1939. Essen: Klartext, 2009, 127–140.
- “Kafka un der yidisher teater. Di misrakh-eyropeyishe yidn in di oygn fun proger yidn,” Jerusholaymer almanakh, 2008/28, 362–371. (in Yiddish)
- The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. by Gershon David Hundert, 2 vol., New York 2008, authored 18 entries: “Bar Kochba Association”; “Českožidovské Listy”; “Czechoslovakia” (together with Michal Frankl and Peter Brod); “Richard Feder”; “Angelo Goldstein”; “Tobias Jakobovits”; “Guido Kisch”; “Jindřich Kohn”; “Hayim Kugel”; “Emil Margulies”; “Gustav Sicher”; “Ludvík Singer”; “Friedrich Thieberger”; “Emil Utitz”; “František Weidmann”; “Gustav Winter”; “Židovská Strana”; and “Židovské Zprávy”.
- “‘Nie wären wir geflüchtetʻ:Im Gütterwaggon aus der Slowakei in die Schweiz,” Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente 2005, 332–362.
- “Czechs, Germans, Jews – Where is the Difference? The Complexity of National Identities of Bohemian Jews, 1918 – 1938,” Bohemia 46, 2005/1, 7–14.
- “Theodor Lessing – vom Außenseiter zum Symbol der antinazistischen Opposition,” Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente 2003, 11–32.
- “Specific Features of Zionism in the Czech Lands in the Interwar Period,” Judaica Bohemiae 38, 2002, 106–159.
- “Jewish Elites in the 19th and 20th Centuries. The B’nai B’rith Order in Central Europe,” Judaica Bohemiae 36, 2000, 119–142.
- “Piłsudski or Masaryk? Revisionist Zionism in Czechoslovakia 1925-1940,” Judaica Bohemiae 35,1999, 210–239.
- “Das Zeugnis von Salmen Gradowski,” Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente 1999, 116–122.
Books reviewed (a selection)
- Celia Donert, The Rights of the Roma: The Struggle for Citizenship in Postwar Czechoslovakia. The American Historical Review, 125 (February 2020) 1: 332–333, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhz1034
- Martina Niedhammer, Nur eine “Geld-Emancipation”? Loyalitäten und Lebenswelten des Prager jüdischen Großbürgertums 1800–1867. Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 64, 2016/1, 149–151.
- “Když jde o prospěch českého národa, antisemitismus to není …. Polemika s texty Aleše Hamana, Jiřího Homoláče, Jana Mareše a Jana Randáka,” Česká literatura 2014/3, 455–462.
- “Menšiny za komunismu: Dvě úvahy nad knihou Matěje Spurného,” Soudobé dějiny, 2013/1–2, 190–198.
- Ines Koeltzsch, Michaela Kuklová, and Michael Wögerbauer (eds.), Übersetzer zwischen den Kulturen: Der Prager Publizist Paul/Pavel Eisner, Bohemia 52, 2012, 168–171.
- Martin Zückert and Laura Hölzlwimmer (eds.), Religion in den böhmischen Ländern 1938–1948: Diktatur, Krieg und Gesellschaftswandel als Herausforderungen für religiöses Leben und kirchliche Organisation. H-Soz-Kult, 21 May 2008, hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-10340
- Hillel J. Kieval, Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands, Český časopis historický 2002/2, 413-414.
- Maurice Godé, Jacques Le Rider, and Françoise Mayer (eds.), Allemands, Juifs et Tchèques à Prague 1890–1924: Deutsche, Juden und Tschechen in Prag 1890–1924: actes du colloque de Montpellier, 8–10 décembre 1994, Český časopis historický, 1998/4, 134.
International conferences and workshops organized
- December 2024, together with Monika Báar
Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Disability: Intersectional Perspectives on the Holocaust, EUI Florence
- May 2023, together with Jonathan Wiesen and Angéla Kóczé
The Politicization of Xenophobia in Transatlantic Contexts: Past and Present, Villa Lanna
- June 2022, together with Kamil Kijek and Semyon Goldin
Jewish Initiative and Agency under Communism. An International Conference, Wroclaw University
- June 2022, together with Ari Joskowicz, Martin Fotta, and Helena Sadílková
Romani History – Methods, Sources, Ethics. An International Roundtable Conference, Villa Lanna
- September 2019, together with Krista Hegburg and Helena Sadílková
Family History Workshop: Tracing the Fate of Individuals in the USHMM Archives. Consultation workshop for families of Romani and Sinti survivors in the Czech Republic. Organized in cooperation with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
- June 2018, together with Helena Sadílková
Forced Sterilization of Romani Women in the Czech(oslovak) and European Contexts: Past and Present, NYU Prague
- September 2017, together with Celia Donert, Eve Rosenhaft, and Helena Sadílková
Tracing the Legacies of the Roma Genocide. Families as Transmitters of Experience and Memory, Villa Lanna, Prague
- August 2017, together with David Rechter and Natalia Aleksiun
Germans or Jews? German-Speaking Jews in Post-War Europe, Center for Jewish History, New York
- July 2017, together with David Engel, Semyon Goldin, and Jonathan Dekel-Chen
Eighth Session of the International Forum of Young Scholars on East European Jewry, Villa Lanna, Prague
- May 2017, together with Kamil Kijek and Stephan Stach
New Approaches to the History of the Jews under Communism, Villa Lanna, Prague
- March 2017, together with Eliyana Adler and Ruth Leiserowitz
The Holocaust and its Aftermath from the Family Perspective, Villa Lanna, Prague
- October 2014, together with Marcin Wodziński
Polish-Jewish and Czech-Jewish Studies: (Dis)Similarities, Villa Lanna, Prague