Anna Hájková

Hájková is the granddaughter of Czech historian Miloš Hájek (1921–2016) and his first wife, Alena Hájková (1924–2012), a historian who specialized in studying Czech Jewish resistance to Nazism. Both were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, and Miloš was a Charter 77 signatory and spokesperson.[3][4] She identifies as Jewish.[2]

From 1998 to 2006, Hájková studied modern history at the Humboldt University Berlin and the University of Amsterdam. She obtained a master's degree under the supervision of Hartmut Kaelble with a thesis titled "Die Juden aus den Niederlanden im Ghetto Theresienstadt, 1943-1945" (The Jews from the Netherlands in Theresienstadt Ghetto, 1943–1945).[5] She received her PhD from the University of Toronto in 2013. Her thesis, supervised by Doris Bergen, was titled, "Prisoner Society in the Terezin Ghetto, 1941-1945", regarding the prisoner society in Theresienstadt Ghetto.[6] Her dissertation received the awards Irma-Rosenberg-Preis and Herbert-Steiner-Preis.[7][8] In 2013, she published the paper "Sexual Barter in Times of Genocide: Negotiating the Sexual Economy of the Theresienstadt Ghetto", which received the Catharine Stimpson Prize for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship.[9] According to Michal Frankl, this study uses "a new and inspiring methodological approach".[10] Since 2013, she has been a professor at the University of Warwick.[11]

In 2020, her book The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt was published by Oxford University Press, which Frankl described as an "important book project".[10] The same year, she edited an issue of German History titled "Sexuality, Holocaust, Stigma".[12] She is the chairman of the academic advisory board of Společnost pro queer paměť ("Society for Queer Memory"), a Czech society which collects information about LGBT history.[13] Hájková has also published articles about historical topics in newspapers and magazines such as Haaretz, Tablet Magazine, and History Today.[14]

In April 2020, a German court found that Hájková had violated the personal rights of a deceased Holocaust survivor[2] by concluding from witness testimonies that it was not unlikely the then camp inmate had entertained a relationship with SS guard Anneliese Kohlmann.[15] Whilst Anneliese Kohlmann explicitly stated in her post-war trial she had fallen in love with this particular inmate,[16] recent legal and investigations arise from the remaining uncertainties regarding the extent to which the camp inmate might or might not have responded to Kohlmann's affection.[17]

• Hájková, Anna (2013). "Sexual Barter in Times of Genocide: Negotiating the Sexual Economy of the Theresienstadt Ghetto". Signs. 38 (3): 503–533. doi:10.1086/668607. S2CID 142859604.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Hájková, Anna (2013). Prisoner Society in the Terezin Ghetto, 1941-1945 (PhD thesis). University of Toronto.
• Löw, Andrea; Bergen, Doris L.; Hájková, Anna, eds. (2014). Alltag im Holocaust: Jüdisches Leben im Großdeutschen Reich 1941–1945 [Everyday Life during the Holocaust: Jewish Lives in the Greater German Reich, 1941–1945] (in German). Walter de Gruyter GmbH. ISBN 978-3-486-73567-3.[18][19]
• Lebovič, Eugen; Hájková, Pavla (2018). Hájková, Anna (ed.). Čekám, až se vrátíš: rodinné deníky z války [I am Waiting For You to Come Back: Wartime Family Diaries] (in Czech). NLN. ISBN 978-80-7422-655-7.[20]
• Hájková, Anna; Heydt, Maria von der (2019). Die letzten Berliner Veit Simons: Holocaust, Geschlecht und das Ende des deutsch-jüdischen Bürgertums [The Last Veit Simons from Berlin. Holocaust, Gender, and the End of the German-Jewish Bourgeoisie] (in German). Hentrich und Hentrich Verlag Berlin. ISBN 978-3-95565-301-9.[21]
• Hájková, Anna (2020). The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-005177-8.

• "Forum: Holocaust and the History of Gender and Sexuality" (PDF). German History. 36 (1): 78–100. 2018. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghx123.