Prof. Kevin Ostoyich was a Visiting Fellow at AGI during the summers of 2017 and 2018. He is Professor of History at Valparaiso University, where he served as the chair of the history department from 2015 to 2019. He is also Guest Professor at the Center for Applied Policy Research at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Historian for the Florence and Laurence Spungen Family Foundation. Prior to moving to Valparaiso, he taught at the University of Montana. He has served as a Guest Professor at the Institute of Bavarian History at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Eadington Fellow at University of Nevada Las Vegas, Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Distinguished Guest Professor at Shanghai University, Senior Fellow at the German Historical Institute Pacific Regional Office/University of California, Berkeley, Research Associate at the Harvard Business School, and Erasmus Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. He currently is an associate of the Center for East Asian Studies of the University of Chicago, a board member of the Sino-Judaic Institute, and an inaugural member of the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum International Advisory Board. He has published on German migration, German-American history, the Holocaust, and the history of the Shanghai Jews. He holds his BA from the University of Pennsylvania and his AM and PhD from Harvard University.
While at AGI, Prof. Ostoyich conducted research on his project, “The Wounds of History, the Wounds of Today: The Shanghai Jews and the Morality of Refugee Crises.” The Shanghai Jews were refugees from Nazi Europe who found haven in Shanghai and thus escaped the Holocaust. For this project Ostoyich interviewed many former Shanghai Jewish refugees and conducted research at the National Archives at College Park, MD, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. At Valparaiso University he co-teaches a course titled “Historical Theatre: The Shanghai Jews,” which fuses the disciplines of history and theatre. To date, he has written and produced four original plays with university students based on the history of the Shanghai Jewish refugee community: Knocking on the Doors of History: The Shanghai Jews (2016), Shanghai Carousel: What Tomorrow Will Be (2019), The Singer of Shanghai (2020), and Lyrics and Laughter from Shanghai: A Relevant Cabaret Evening with Historical Commentary (2025). He has been involved in the creation of two films: Gary’s Letter (2024) and Three Girls of Shanghai (2024).
Click here for an article by Ostoyich on the Shanghai Jews.
He is currently trying to interview as many former Shanghailanders as possible. If you would like to be interviewed or know someone who might want to be interviewed, please contact Professor Ostoyich at kevin.ostoyich@valpo.edu.
A Doctor’s Mission: The Life and Work of Ernst Kisch
Read the stories of other Shanghai Jews Dr. Ernst Kisch was an opera-loving Viennese physician who was imprisoned in Dachau and Buchenwald for being Jewish. Upon his release from Buchenwald, …
Mothers: Remembering Three Women on the 80th Anniversary of Kristallnacht
Ida was terrified. She figured she would never see either her husband or brother ever again. For several days she fretted, not knowing what to do. While desperately trying to …
The Story of Bert Reiner, the Toy Maker, or: An Appreciation of the Individual Experiences of Former Shanghai Jewish Refugees
During the 1983 Christmas season, Coleco Industries, Inc. took the world by storm with a novel concept for a doll: Each doll was unique and would be adopted by a …
A Survivor’s Luck: Reflections on Berlin and Shanghai
Harry Katz is lucky.[1] As a man who has had a life-long love of numbers, he knows the odds were stacked against him from the beginning: He was born a Jew …
Shattered by Glass: Working through Memories of Kristallnacht and Shanghai
We should learn from this story of the Shanghai Jews. But we haven’t learned.
Records of Shanghai: One Man’s Quest to Validate Memories of a Family’s Refugee Past
Eric Kisch is a historian. Although he does not hold a Ph.D. and made a comfortable living as a market researcher, he is a historian nonetheless. The signs are all …
From Kristallnacht and Back: Searching for Meaning in the History of the Shanghai Jews
When the Jews sought refuge from the Nazi regime, they were most often met with hatred and indifference. Most of the world closed its doors on the Jews, and, for …
