Mark Celinscak

Education

Ph.D., York University

M.A., University of Toronto

B.Ed., Brock University

B.A., Laurentian University

Background

Dr. Celinscak is a historian of twentieth century Britain and Europe, specializing in war, Holocaust, and genocide studies. He is the author of Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp, winner of a Vine Award for Non-Fiction, and Kingdom of Night: Witnesses to the Holocaust, winner of a Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Holocaust literature. He is also the co-editor of Artistic Representations of Suffering: Rights, Resistance, and Remembrance and the forthcoming International Approaches to the Holocaust (University of Nebraska Press).

His primary area of research is the Second World War and its impact on the twentieth century. He is particularly interested in the relationship between war and culture. Dr. Celinscak is currently working on a new project that explores the process of denazification in the British zone of postwar Germany. This work is supported by a European Holocaust Research Infrastructure fellowship at the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in London, England. He recently collaborated on exhibitions at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and the Durham Museum. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Dr. Celinscak currently serves as co-chair of the Consortium of Higher Education Centers for Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Studies. He formerly served as its treasurer and was the program chair for its 2019 biennial meeting. He is principal investigator of a UNO Big Idea, the Samuel Bak Museum and Academic Learning Center. Dr. Celinscak was a Pearl Resnick Postdoctoral Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has held fellowships at the Summer Institute on Genocide Studies and Prevention at the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College; the Regional Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization at the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; and the Summer Institute on Jewish Civilization and the Holocaust at the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University. He also participated in the Jack and Anita Hess Faculty Seminar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies in Washington. In addition, he worked on the Azrieli Foundation Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program, interviewing survivors and editing their manuscripts.

Frequently Taught Courses

• The Holocaust
• Comparative Genocide
• Second World War
• First World War
• Modern European History
• Modern British History

Publications

Kingdom of Night: Witnesses to the Holocaust (University of Toronto Press, January 2022)

Artistic Representations of Suffering: Rights, Resistance, and Remembrance (Rowman & Littlefield, October 2021)

Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp (University of Toronto Press, October 2015)