Biography

Madeline Vadkerty is an American residing in Bratislava, Slovakia. She received her PhD in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Gratz College (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) as a Samuel P. Mandell Fellow in January 2025.

Vadkerty conducts original research at the Institute of Social Sciences at the Center for Social and Psychological Sciences of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. She also teaches about the Holocaust in the Slovak state at Comenius University in Bratislava.

She is a former employee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC, and Advocates for Survivors of Torture and Trauma (ASTT) in Baltimore, Maryland.

Her 2020 book, Your Honor Mr. President (in Slovak), received awards from the Panta Rhei Academy and the Slovak Independent Writers’ Association. Her latest book, Writing for their Lives: Ordinary People Petition Slovak President Jozef Tiso during the Holocaust, is scheduled for publication by Purdue University Press in February 2027.

She is a Curatorium Member at the Holocaust Documentation Center in Bratislava, an Executive Committee member of Friends of Slovakia, and a member of the editorial board of Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe (OPREE). Vadkerty has written numerous articles and spoken before domestic and international audiences to bring attention to the Holocaust in Slovakia.

Books

• Forthcoming, February 2027: Writing for their Lives: Ordinary People Petition Slovak President Jozef Tiso during the Holocaust. Purdue University Press.
• March 2020: Your Honor Mr. President: Letters to Jozef Tiso. Žilina: Absynt, 2020. In Slovak.

Additional Publications

• 2026 — Book chapter: “Deti pišu Tisovi o židovskej otázky” [Children Write to Tiso about the Jewish Question], in Děti, mládež a moc v letech 1938/39–1989 [Children, Youth and Power from 1938/39 to 1989]. Prague/Liberec: Národní archiv and Technická univerzita v Liberci, 2026.
• 2025 — Book chapter: “I’m in Love with a Jew: Now What?” In Druhá svetová vojna: Spoločnost. Banská Bystrica: Museum of the Slovak National Uprising, 2025.
• December 2025 — Magazine article: “Daniel Kováč: A Story about Rescuing Jews during the Holocaust.” In Slovak. Bratislava: Pamät národa.
• 2023: “A Case Study in the Microhistory of the Holocaust: The Story of Andrej Horn.” S:IMON, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute, 10 (2023), no. 3, pp. 26–45.
• 2023 — Editor: The Ľudák Slovak Republic of 1939–1945 and the Holocaust in the Collective Memory of Slovak Society. Bratislava: Open Society Foundation.
• December 2022 — Book chapter: “The Holocaust in Slovakia: Letters to President Tiso,” in Dejiny Židov v Spišskej Novej Vsi [History of the Jews of Spišská Nová Ves]. Spišská Nová Ves: OZ Pro Memory, 2022.
• February 2022: “Aspects of the Holocaust during the Slovak Autonomy Period (October 6, 1938 to March 14, 1939).” Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe, vol. 42, issue 1, article 2.
• January 2022: “Jewish Entreaties to Slovak President Tiso during the Holocaust.” European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) Blog.
• April 2020: “L’udia pišu prezidentovi republiky Jozefovi Tisovi o židovskej otázke (1939–1944)” [People Write to President Tiso about the Jewish Question]. Pamät národa, ročnik XVI, 4:2020, pp. 36–42.
• March 2020: “The Holocaust in Slovakia: Jewish Letters to Jozef Tiso 1939–1944.” PRISM Magazine, volume 12, spring 2020.
• March 2020: “Anti-Jewish Propaganda in the NDH and the Slovak State.” Occasional Papers in Religion in Eastern Europe (OPREE), vol. 40, issue 2, article 9.
• 2018: Rajcan, Vanda, Madeline Vadkerty and Ján Hlavinka. Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany: 1939–1945, vol. 3. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2018, pp. 841–851.

Grants

• 2025: Sharon Abramson Research Grant, Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University, for “Religion and the Holocaust in Slovakia: 1939–1945.”
• 2025–2026: Teaching Grant, Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University, for “The Holocaust in Slovakia: Letters to Jozef Tiso (1939 to 1945).”

Selected Presentations and Workshops

• September 16, 2026: “Transnational Petitioning: The Auschwitz Report and the Fate of Hungarian Jewry.” Conference on “Jewish and Gentile Petitioning Practices in the Border Regions of Nazi Satellite States during World War II and in its Aftermath,” hosted by the Institute of Social Sciences, CSPV, Slovak Academy of Sciences.
• July 17, 2025: “Clergy and Petitions to Slovak President Jozef Tiso and the Fate of Slovakia’s Jews.” Panel discussion, “A Tale of Two Satellites: Clergy and Antisemitic Persecution in Croatia and Slovakia,” at the “New Insights on the Holocaust” conference, “Rescue in Action or Rescue Inaction: Religion and Rescue during the Holocaust,” hosted by Appalachian State University and Western Galilee College.
• June 9–13, 2025: Participant, PERH Faculty Seminar, “Christianity in East Central Europe and the Holocaust.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.
• May 26, 2025: “Letters to Slovak President Jozef Tiso.” Presentation for education staff, Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities, Oslo, Norway.
• November 23, 2024: “Holocaust Testimony without Liberation: Letters to Slovak President Jozef Tiso about the ‘Jewish Question.’” Panel discussion, “Waiting for Liberation: Authoritarian Rule in Slovakia,” Association of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEES) Annual Convention.
• November 15, 2024: “Competing Discourses in Jewish and Non-Jewish Entreaties to Slovak President Jozef Tiso (1939–1944).” Panelist, “The Languages of European Gentile and Jewish Petitions during the Holocaust: Conversion, Inclusion, and Linguistic Injuries,” Lessons and Legacies, Claremont, California.
• August 20, 2024: “Children Write to Tiso.” Conference on Czecho-Slovak Relations/Slovak-Czech Relations, “Children, Youth, and Power,” Liberec, Czech Republic.
• June 11, 2024: “Testimony to an Impending Genocide: Petitions to Slovak President Jozef Tiso (1939–1945).” Conference, “The Unforgotten: Exploring the Holocaust from the Individual Perspective,” Košice, Slovakia.
• November 13, 2023: “Listy Jozefovi Tisovi: príbehy ľudí prosiacich o milosť prezidenta” [Petitions to Jozef Tiso: The Stories of those Requesting the President’s Mercy]. Centropa teachers’ conference, Bratislava.
• November 12, 2023: “Ľudia píšu Tisovi” [People Write to Tiso]. Ústav pamäti národa, Freedom Festival, Bratislava.

Affiliations

• Board Member, Holocaust Documentation Center, Bratislava
• Member, Slovak Independent Writers’ Association, Bratislava
• Board Member, Friends of Slovakia
• Editorial Board Member, Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe (OPREE)
• Member, International Network of Genocide Scholars
• Member, Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies
• Member, Slovak Studies Association