Modern Jewish History Through Student Travel

February 13, 2023

Oskar Czendze

To honor the memory of his late wife, Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat ’64 endowed the Frances Carol Eizenstat Travel Fund in 2017 to support graduate and undergraduate student travel by students in the Jewish studies program to sites in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and around the world that are significant for understanding modern Jewish history. The fund provides student travel funding to complement the faculty support provided by the Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat Professorship in Modern Jewish History, which was established by friends of Stuart Eizenstat in his honor in 2008.

In 2021, Oskar Czendze, a Ph.D. candidate in history, received an award from the Frances Carol Eizenstat Travel Fund to conduct research in Poland and Ukraine.

“The Frances Carol Eizenstat award was essential to my dissertation research on Jewish immigrants from Habsburg Galicia (1890s–1938),” Czendze said. “I was able to visit several archives in Poland and Ukraine, where I discovered documents on the local Jewish communities during the Austrian rule, the First World War, and the social and cultural life of Jews in interwar Poland. I am very grateful for this support and the opportunity to discover the Jewish world of Habsburg Galicia in Eastern Europe.”