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Dr. David Rosenberg’s life has been one of scholarly, archival work tied fundamentally into activism. He is committed to the memory of oft-forgotten people and their circumstances, and the ongoing communal work of remembering. In this conversation, he and Dr. Lauren Bairnsfather establish an introduction to Dr. Rosenberg and his work.
This conversation kicks off a 6-part series of mini-documentaries with Dr. Rosenberg as he shares the stories of some of the subjects of his research and illustrates the Jews of Amiens as a microcosm of the French Jewish experience during the Holocaust.
About Dr. David Rosenberg: Dr. Rosenberg holds a B.A. from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in French History from Yale University. Dr. Rosenberg taught history at the University of Mississippi and Washington and Jefferson College before serving as Labor Archivist at the University of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2007.
Dr. Rosenberg’s lifelong relationship with Amiens, France, was forged in 1973 when he travelled there to write his dissertation on the city’s Protestant minority of the 16th-17th centuries. Starting in 2011, he began researching and documenting the history of the Jewish community of Amiens during the German occupation, an effort which has received international acclaim.
Dr. Rosenberg compiled his research into an exhibit, Jews of the Somme, and a website, www.jewsofthesomme.com, in collaboration with his daughter, Lydia Rosenberg. Thanks to his efforts, the Departmental Archives in Amiens made available in digital form a collection of more than 34,000 pages of documents on the Jews of the Somme previously available only in Archives in Paris. For his contributions to the history and archives of Amiens and its region Dr. Rosenberg was honored in 2013 as a Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication.
One of his most high-profile projects took place in the 1990s and early 2000s, when he was the organizer of the Committee for Appropriate Acknowledgment (CAA). Dr. Rosenberg and the CAA, working within Pittsburgh, PA, sought to research and document Bayer AG’s corporate culpability during the Holocaust and pushed for corporate acknowledgment and atonement. Dr. Rosenberg dedicated 14 years to this project, and his research is now in the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Another important piece of activism for Dr. Rosenberg began in 2004, when he heard media reports of a genocide in Western Sudan. In response, he co-founded the grassroots activist group Pittsburgh Darfur Emergency Coalition (PDEC). He served as the coalition’s Volunteer Coordinator from 2004-2018. Notably, in 2010 he organized a Sudanese Diaspora summit in Pittsburgh hosted by Carnegie Mellon University. He was later recognized by the national group Save Darfur through its “Darfur Heroes” program.
Dr. Rosenberg has also previously served as President of the Tree of Life Congregation Men’s Club and Regional President of the Tri-State Region Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs. He is currently a member of the Adult Education Committee at Temple Emanuel of South Hills.