Livia Rothkirchen

Livia Rothkirchen (; 1922 – March 2013) was a Czechoslovak-born Israeli historian and archivist. She was the author of several books about the Holocaust, including The Destruction of Slovak Jewry, the first authoritative description of the deportation and murder of the Jews of Slovakia. In all three areas, harsh regulations were imposed on Jewish citizens, most of whom were ultimately deported and killed.

After the war, Rothkirchen and her three sisters moved to Prague, where she studied Russian and English language and literature at Charles University, obtaining her PhD in 1949 for a thesis on the English playwright and novelist J. B. Priestley, Modern England in the Light of J. B. Priestley's Plays. The latter book received praise for being one of the only works on its subject available in English, but also some criticism for overemphasizing the idea of Czech tolerance and presenting a one-sided view of Czech-Jewish relations.

Rothkirchen was awarded the Max Nordau Prize for History in 1973. An issue of Yad Vashem Studies was dedicated to her memory after her death in Jerusalem in 2013.

Selected works

(1961). Hurban Yahadut Slovakyan. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Press. (1961). The Destruction of Slovak Jewry. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Press. (1972) ed. Sanbar, Moshe. My Longest Year: In the Hungarian Labour Service and in the Nazi Camps. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. (1976) with Israel Gutman, eds. The Catastrophe of European Jewry: Antecedents, History, Reflections. Selected Papers. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. (1979). Deep-Rooted Yet Alien: Some Aspects of the History of the Jews in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Fairview, NJ: Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center. (2005). The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust. Lincoln and Jerusalem: University of Nebraska Press and Yad Vashem.