Emeritus professor and political science department head at the University of Connecticut, Louis Gerson, passed away on October 16, 2016. Gerson led an extraordinary life; he fled his native Poland just months prior to the Nazi invasion and fought with the United States Army in Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge.

After the war ended, he studied political science and diplomatic history at UConn, where he would meet his future wife Elizabeth Shanley. Gerson completed his doctorate in political science at Yale, afterwards returning to UConn to teach. This led to a 40-year career at UConn where he made many notable contributions to the political science department and the university as a whole.

According to Stuart Miller, Academic Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life, Gerson “was certainly an early and prime mover in getting UConn to pursue the study of the Holocaust, Eastern Europe, and Human Rights.” Gerson, with the help of grants and scholars from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and Oxford University in England, secured important Holocaust records in Poland. While UConn did not become the official repository for the material, Gerson was crucial in committing the university to support Judaic studies. His work helped attract the interest of Simon Konover, who would become the Center for Judaic Studies’ major benefactor.

The Hartford Courant article featuring the life of Louis Gerson can be found here.

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