In Memoriam: Livia Rothkirchen

The staff of Holocaust and Genocide Studies is saddened to note the passing of Dr. Livia Rothkirchen, Holocaust survivor and noted historian at Yad Vashem, in late March, 2013. She was 91.

Rothkirchen was born in 1922 to an observant Jewish family from Sevljuš, which was then in Czechoslovakia. She was fluent in several languages including German, Czech, and Hungarian. She later learned English and Russian.

After German forces occupied Hungary in 1944, she was among the first group selected for ghettoization and deportation to Auschwitz. Having survived the Holocaust, Rothkirchen and her three sisters settled in Prague. She studied at Charles University there and received her Ph.D. in 1949. In 1956, she moved to Jerusalem and soon began working at Yad Vashem. In the 1960s, she became a member of its staff and eventually editor of Yad Vashem Studies.

As a pioneer in research on Czechoslovakia and the Holocaust, she wrote several books and many articles. Her books include Moshe Sandberg’s My Longest Year: In the Hungarian Labour Service and in the Nazi Camps (editor, 1972), The Catastrophe of European Jewry (co-editor, 1973), Deep-Rooted Yet Alien: Some Aspects of the History of the Jews in Subcarpathian Ruthenia (1979), and The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust (2005).