Centropa
Pfeilgasse 8/15
1080 Vienna, Austria

Centropa is located in Vienna’s eighth district in an enormous, 1920s apartment we have converted to our high tech use. Our visitors include ambassadors and foreign ministers, state secretaries and chancellors. We also welcome Jewish and non-Jewish tour groups, so feel free to be in touch should you wish to visit us while you are in Vienna. Download our annual report here ->

Our office is comprised of:

Edward Serotta, our director. Edward is a writer, photographer and filmmaker specializing in Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe. An American born in Savannah, Georgia, Edward has worked in Central Europe since 1985 and lived in the region since 1988. His three books are: Out of the Shadows, Survival in Sarajevo and Jews, Germany, Memory. Between 1996 and 1999, Edward produced three films for ABC News Nightline. As a writer, Edward has contributed to Time Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and recently contributed an essay on Jewish Photography in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust for The Oxford Companion Guide to the Photograph. 

Ouriel Morgensztern is our tech director, was born in France, served in the Israeli Army for three years and is a member of Vienna's Jewish community basketball team. He holds a degree in Sound and Multimedia from ISTS in Paris.

Ulrike Ostermann, who graduated from the University of Applied Science MultiMediaArt in Salzburg, is our chief filmmaker. Before producing our Centropa Films, she worked in the fields of media design and experimental video animation in Berlin and Vienna. Her music videos have been shown on international film festivals.

Wolfgang Els, who studied Audio and Video Design at the University of Sankt Poelten in Austria, is also working on our movie projects and is responsible for Centropa´s sound design.

Fabian Rühle is our education coordinator for German and Austrian schools. Fabian emigrated from East Berlin to West Berlin in 1988, holds a degree in American History and Political Science from Rutgers and the Free University of Berlin. He worked for the American Jewish Committee in Berlin before joining Centropa in Vienna.

Evgenij Gretschko, 22 years old, is from Russia and runs our design programs. He finished high school in Vilnius and is currently studying at Webster University in Vienna.

Veronika Doppelreiter, from Brazil, is our bookkeeper, and Eka Elashvili, from Georgia, is our secretary.

Tanja Eckstein, who emigrated from East Berlin to Austria in 1984, is our chief interviewer in Vienna. Tanja has conducted more than 70 interviews while a few other interviewers completed another 20 between 2001 and 2002. Through these life stories and the 2,000 digitized and annotated images, we now have a portrait of Jewish life in what was once one of the most well established and integrated Jewish communities in Europe. Nearly every one of our Viennese interviewees survived the war by fleeing to the USSR, the UK, the US or Palestine. All returned in the years after. Regrettably, we have not yet secured grants to translate many of these interviews into English (we are still looking) but as you will see, they are all available in German.

Andrea Schellner is the chief copy editor for Centropa as well as our English to German translator. Andrea, who was born in Austria, lives in Nairobi, Kenya, where she worked as a freelance journalist before coming to work full-time for Centropa in 2003.

Budapest

To visit our Hungarian language website, go to www.centropa.hu

In Budapest, Eszter Andor and Dora Sardi are our two chief historians. Eszter completed her MA in history at Central European University (CEU), where she focused on Hungarian Jewish social history. From 1997 to 2001, she Eszter worked as Jewish Studies coordinator at the CEU. She has been working in Centropa since 2000.

Dora holds degrees in Jewish studies as well as in Hungarian language and literature, writing her dissertation about Hungarian-Jewish literature at the turn of the 20th century with special focus on countryside Jewry. Since 2000 she is responsible for Centropa´s methodological concepts, for reviewing Hungarian interviews and for the Hungarian language website. Eszter now focuses on editing our interviews while Dora directs our education program in Hungary. They are assisted by Szilvia Czingel.

Eszter and Dora created our unique methodology—combining family stories with the pictures that go with them—then set about writing our 120-page interviewer’s workbook. (Click here to see the workbook, which is part of our Oral Historian’s Tool Kit). Centropa has provided data and images to the Holocaust Museum and the Hungarian pavilion at Auschwitz.

Judit Lakner is the editor of the cultural content on our website, Centropa Magazine, which is sponsored by the Hanadiv Charitable Foundation. Twice a year we publish this as a print-magazine.

Other countries

After training more than a dozen interviewers and editors for our Centropa interview project in Romania since 2002, we began a partnership with the Goren Goldstein Center for Jewish Studies in Bucharest in 2006. Anca Ciuciu has assembled a team that is now interviewing throughout southern and northeastern Romania. Professor Felice Waldman is our historical advisor.

Pavla Neuner coordinates our educational project in the Czech Republic. Pavla is also employed at the Jewish museum in Prague.

We have been working in the Czech Republic since 2002, and we cooperate closely with The Federation of Czech Jewish Communities, The Jewish Museum of Prague, and with The Terezin Memorial.

Dr. Albena Taneva is one of the leading authorities on the Holocaust in Bulgaria. The author of several ground-breaking works on Bulgaria, Jews and civil society, Albena approached Centropa in 2006 as she felt our methodology was an ideal program with which to reach young Bulgarians today. Albena is the coordinator for our Bulgarian educational program.

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Board of Directors, Advisors

Our board is based in Atlanta, Georgia (USA):

Dr. Cedric Suzman: program director of Southern Center for International Studies
David Sarnat: former Atlanta Federation Director, currently a consultant to non-profits
Jane Leavey: Director of William Bremen Museum and Cultural Center
Clifford Graubart: publisher, The Old New York Book Company

Jewish Education Advisors

Eileen Soffer and Nechama Tamler are our primary educational consultants in the United States and have worked closely with us on crafting an educational program for the nine US Jewish high schools currently in our educational pilot program.

We also rely on a team of ten Jewish history and Holocaust education teachers in eight US Jewish high schools for constant feedback on our programs (names available on request). We brought these educators to Vienna and Budapest for a ten-day study seminar in August 2007, followed up with an evaluation seminar in Baltimore in February 2008 and then a seven-day international workshop in Berlin in July 2008.

Historical advisory board

Dr. Gabor Kadar: one of Hungary's leading historians on Jewish history
Dr. Michael Miller: director of Jewish Studies, Central Europe University in Budapest
Ms Judit Lakner: managing editor of The Budapest Review of Books
Dr. Margalit Bejarano, director of oral histories at Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Dr. Jan Munk, director of the Terezin Memorial

Community advisory Council
We rely on a group of Jewish leaders for advice:
Dr. Michael Schneider, Executive Director of the World Jewish Congress
Dr. Tomas Kraus: Executive Secretary, Federation of Jewish Communities, Czech Republic
Dr. Jakob Finci: President, Jewish Community of Bosnia
Mag. Hannah Lessing: General Secretary, Holocaust Restitution Agency, Austria

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Legal disclaimer:

Centropa is not responsible for any external contents linked or referred to from their pages.