Wolf Gruner

Originally from Germany, Wolf Gruner is a professor of history at the University of Southern California, where he also holds the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish studies. He specializes in researching the Holocaust and German-Jewish history, as well as the comparative history of genocides/mass violence and racial discrimination against indigenous populations in Latin America.  On these topics, Gruner has published 11 books, among them “Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis: Economic Needs and Nazi Racial Aims," with Cambridge University Press. Currently, he is working on an exciting book for a wider, non-academic audience about forgotten acts of individual defiance, protest and resistance of German and Austrian Jews during the Holocaust. This book will demonstrate the wide range of individual acts of resistance by telling the life stories of six Jewish men and women, and how they defied the persecution during the Third Reich.