Dr. Irina Scherbakowa

Member Kuratorium Gedenkstätte Buchenwald; Kuratorium Aktion Sühnezeichen; Vorstand Gräfin Dönhoff-Stiftung; Advisory Board Wiener Wiesenthal Institut für Holocaust-Studien (VWI)

Born 1949 in Moscow. Graduated from School of Philology at the Moscow State University, degree in German philological studies (1973).

1978: Ph. D. in Philological Studies.

1991 to 2006: Senior Methodologist at the center for Oral History and Visual Anthropology at the Russian State University for the Humanities

Since 1999: Director of the Project “Russian Annual Historical Competition for High School Students” run by the Memorial Society (Moscow). Direktor of Oral-History-Centre (Memorial).

2008: Gastprofessor at the University of Bremen (Osteuropa-Forschung), Gastprofessor at the University of Jena (Germany)

During the past decade Ms. Scherbakova had numerous publications in the Russian and foreign languages (mostly in German-language countries) on the history of GULAG, women in GULAG, totalitarianism and the problems of memory, Ostarbeiter, etc.

2005 award the decoration Bundesverdienstkreuz (Germany)

2014 award the Carl-von-Ossietzky-prize Germany

2017 Goethe-Medaille (Germany)