Chad S.A. Gibbs

Chad S.A. Gibbs is an assistant professor and the Zucker/Goldberg Endowed Chair in Holocaust Studies. He also serves as director of the Zucker/Goldberg Center for Holocaust Studies. Chad is a historian of the Holocaust, antisemitism, modern Germany, and war and society. He is particularly interested in resistance and everyday life during the Holocaust. 

His book, Survival at Treblinka: Geography, Gender, and Social Networks in Jewish Resistance, is due out in the George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas with the University of Wisconsin Press in April 2026.  Survival at Treblinka was named first runner-up for the George L. Mosse First Book Prize.

Chad is currently starting on a pair of new book projects. In partnership with Ashley Walters, he is researching the history and legacies of the Holocaust in the small Polish shtetl of Kałuszyn. This co-authored project will examine the Kałuszyn diaspora in the United States, the events of the Shoah in the town itself, and how Kalushiners around the world have worked to maintain community and remember their ancestral home.

Alongside this project, Chad intends to continue his work on the history of Treblinka and the people who survived this place. In his second monograph, Chad will examine the lives of those who escaped Treblinka during the August 2, 1943, revolt from the moment of that uprising to the passing of the last witness. Where did they go immediately after the fighting, how did they survive the rest of the war, what was it like to build a life after Treblinka, and how did the survivors transmit the stories of this place to the next generation? These and other questions will form the core of a book focused on the people who endured this place and their descendants.

Chad’s work has been supported by fellowships from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Yale Fortunoff Video Archive, Yad Vashem, the Claims Conference, the George L. Mosse Program in History, and the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, where he remains an Affiliated Researcher. In his role as director of the Zucker/Goldberg Center, Chad serves on the Executive Committee of the Consortium of Higher Education Centers for Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Studies. 

Before academic life, Chad served eight years in the US Army including combat deployment to Iraq. He was wounded there in 2006 and medically retired in 2009. Chad received his PhD in History with a minor in Gender and Women’s History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, his his MA in History from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and his BA in History from the University of Wyoming. Those interested can learn more at his professional website.