Passing of Erika Apfelbaum

[Larry Stern]

Ian Lubek asked me to forward the message below to her Cheiron and ESHHS colleagues.

- Larry Stern

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Begin forwarded message:

Erika Ruth Apfelbaum ( b June 11, 1934) died Dec.31, 2024, peacefully at age 90 in the Hague, Netherlands, after a short illness. She leaves behind daughter Naomi Apelbaum-Lubek, son-in-law Lucas Dufour, grand-children Mélinée and Tristan, "ex" Ian Lubek, and many dear, old friends and relatives.

Born in Kassel, Germany in 1934,  as her parents Max and Mélanie migrated from the Galicia region of Austria/Poland, first to Berlin, then Kassel, and then soon seeking safety in Paris. After the occupation of France, her father was arrested and sent to the Gurs camp in Vichy-controlled France. Erika and her mother settled during the war in nearby Soumoulu, to bring food to the camp. Max was deported to Auschwitz and killed, while Erika and her mother were saved from deportation by local officials and sheltered in the community. A few years ago, Erika returned to Soumoulou for a ceremony conferring the status of "Righteous among the Nations" to one representative of those locals  who physically took her and her mother off a bus that was deporting the remaining non-camp Jews and then sheltered them from the occupiers.

In 1948, she moved to Paris and studied psychology at the Sorbonne. She obtained her PhD/Doctorat d'Etat in 1971 from Université de Paris VII and was a longtime researcher at the C.N.R.S (National Centre for Scientific Research), advancing to Research Director Emerita . She worked at Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale (Université de Paris VII/CNRS, 1960-1988) and then at GEDISST/Groupe d'Études sur la Division sociale et sexuelle du Travail, at the IRESCO/Institute de Recherche sur les Sociétés Contemporaines (1988 until retirement in 2000), serving as the IRESCO's co-director, 1991-4.

Erika presented papers at many international conferences between 1965-2001, and actively hosted an early ESHHS/European Cheiron Society meeting in Paris (1985), an International Conference on the History of Social Psychology at her institute IRESCO (1991) and later, the ISTP conference at Saclas, France, 1993. She published numerous critical articles and chapters on conflict, women's leadership, power, invisibility, critical history of social psychology,  and history, memory and identity etc. She debated N. Chomsky in the 1970s about French historical revisionism and the denial of the Shoah/Holocaust which had taken her father's life. Her recent book, published in French and German, was a biographical history of her mother Mélanie's near-century of life, and her travels and tribulations against the background of a changing Europe.

    She taught social psychology courses in France at U. Vincennes, Rouen, and Amiens, supervised Masters and Doctoral students, and was invited as visiting professor at Stony Brook (USA, 1969-71, to teach social psychology of conflict), at Guelph (Canada, 1973, to create the first  Psychology of Women course, and then teach Paris Semester students 1986-94, "Foodways in France"), and at U. Western Sydney (Australia, 1999, worked with students in the newly established Critical Social Psychology program).