Bonnie Harris

Website of Bonnie M. Harris
Please visit my personal website at www.bonniesbiz.com for extensive readings and postings regarding my PhD dissertation research and international sites of Holocaust Memorialization and Commemoration.

October 25, 2009 PARALLEL JOURNEYS: The Search for Cantor Joseph Cysner and the Philippine Rescue of Refugee Jews
I have been invited to present my research on the story of Joseph Cysner and the rescue of Jews in the Philippines at Temple Beth Israel in San Diego, CA.

May 17-19, 2009 Int'l Workshop "Jewish Perspectives on Forced Emigration’ (1938/39 to 1941) until Deportation and Ghettoization
I have been invited to present my research at the Institute for the History of German Jews in Hamburg concerning the immigration of European Jews to the Philippines as an escape from the Holocaust.

2008 Silberman Seminar for Advanced Holocaust Studies, USHMM
In June, I participated in the 2008 Silberman Seminar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Wash DC.Twenty of us from around the world were invited to share our research interests at the Center.

October 28, 2008 "See You Next Year in Jerusalem" Exhibit, Zbaszyn Poland
I was invited to collaborate in an exhibit and to participate in its debuting commemorative event in Zbaszyn, Poland marking the 70th anniversary of the Polenaktion, the mass expulsion of Polish Jews from Nazi Germany prior to the start of WWII.

Public History

Alumna
B.A., San Diego State University; M.A., San Diego State University; Ph.D. UCSB 2009
Phone: 893-3636   

I was hooded in June 2009 and filed my dissertation the next week: "From Zbaszyn to Manila: The Holocaust Odyssey of Joseph Cysner and Refugee Rescue in the Philippines." My doctoral dissertation is the first academic study of the rescue of German refugee Jews from the Holocaust by the Jewish Community of Manila. I am already in contract with a publisher and have began revisions for the book.My academic field of study is Modern European Jewish History, with an emphasis in Holocaust History and Memorialization. (more...)

In my MA program at SDSU, I wrote my Master’s Thesis on the Form and Function of Temple Architecture in the ancient Near East and taught Ancient Near Eastern History at SDSU before entering my PhD program at UCSB. In my BA program in Humanities at SDSU, I graduated Magna cum laude with distinction in the Major.

I assisted in the operation of the Jewish Studies Department at San Diego State University in association with Dr. Lawrence Baron, Director of the Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies and President of the Western Jewish Studies Association, for which I still serve as the WJSA’s Executive Administrator. I am employed by the Jewish Historical Society of San Diego as their senior archivist and I volunteer as an instructor at the San Diego Institute of Religion for the L.D.S. Church, where I have written and taught curriculum in Old Testament and New Testament studies. I also teach Modern World History, Early World History, Western Civilization, and Ancient Western History at Grossmont College in El Cajon, San Diego. I have been married to the same man for over 30 years, my husband Scott Harris. We have three adult children, Annie, Bonnie Jean, and Jennie, and a 4 year old granddaughter, Angela.