Rebecca Erbelding ’03; Miriam-Lomaskin photo
Rebecca Erbelding ’03 won a 2018 National Jewish Book Award for her nonfiction work Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe. The book, published by Penguin Random House – Doubleday, tells the story of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s effort to save Jews from the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II.
Erbelding won the JDC – Herbert Katzki Award for “writing based on archival material.” Begun in 1950, the National Jewish Book Awards are the longest-running and most prestigious awards in Jewish literature.
Erbelding, who majored in American studies and history at Mary Washington, is an archivist, curator, and historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She has a Ph.D. in American history from George Mason University.