After 47 years of teaching at the University of Maryland, Professor Marsha Rozenblit has a long list of accomplishments: a specialist in Jewish European history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Rozenblit used her knowledge to publish books and articles with the goal of bringing Jewish history to light.

Rozenblit grew up in Brooklyn, New York and has considered moving back, but she decided against it for now. She emphasized the importance of how being from New York has impacted her life.

“I went to public school in a very Jewish neighborhood … I had a secular experience in a Jewish social framework and that has had an important impact on me,” Rozenblit said.

Rozenblit’s father was a Holocaust survivor, and was among the oldest of the survivors in his 30s. He died when Rozenblit was just 10 years old, but he had a lasting impact on her life. However, it is not something that she brings up while teaching. 

“I don’t want [my students] to think that I’m teaching them about my father. I want them to think that I’m presenting a scholarly understanding of the Holocaust,” Rozenblit said.

Rozenblit majored in European history at Barnard College, the Women’s College at Columbia University, graduating in 1971. Afterwards, though, she didn’t know which direction she wanted to go with her career, but writing her senior thesis gave her inspiration. 

She wrote her thesis on British public opinion of Hitler’s first eight months in power. After reading newspaper after newspaper, endless political magazines and 46 pages of writing, Rozenblit found her passion: historical research.

“It was the first time I didn’t write a paper the night before it was due,” Rozenblit said.“I went through several drafts with my advisor and I just loved the whole process.” 

Using her prior experience, she helps her students research for their thesis papers. In particular, Samual Fox, a senior history major, is writing his honors thesis about how evangelical people curated a new brand of Christian Zionism in the south while having antisemetic beliefs.

“She’s been super helpful as a research guide…telling me where to look [and] what types of sources I should be looking for,” Fox said. “I really do not feel I’d be very directionally confident if I did not have her as an advisor.” 

Over the course of her career, she has dedicated hours upon hours of research to write a piece explaining it for the rest of us who don’t have the time or desire to spend so much time researching, but are still interested in the findings.

Her first book was called “The Jews of Vienna, 1867-1914: Assimilation and Identity.” In this book, she delved into how Jewish people assimilated into a larger society in Vienna, Austria and how they maintained a Jewish identity. She also covered the issues of occupational transformation, residential concentration and organizational networks.

She later published her second book titled “Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria During World War I.” She utilized organizational records, memoirs and newspapers to analyze how Jews supported the war effort before being crushed and mortified by the collapse of the country they called home.

Currently, Rozenblit is working on a study of the Jews who were born in the former Austria-Hungary territory and escaped Europe between 1938 and 1941 to start a new life in the United States, Great Britain and British Mandate Palestine. She is studying the extent of their successes and failures in creating a new home for themselves.

While in the classroom, Rozenblit tries to incorporate discussions into her classes. Rather than stand at the front of the classroom and lecture for the length of the period, she asks engaging questions to get her students thinking about the topics she’s teaching.

Fox has taken three classes taught by Rozenblit in his time at UMD: The Holocaust of European Jewry, History of Antisemitism and Jewish Identity in the Modern Era.

“She’s just so otherworldly knowledgeable. She paints a narrative in her courses that I think is just super engaging,” Fox said. “She constantly asks questions that don’t seem rhetorical, and constantly engages with students to try and get dialogue cooking within her class.”