The Kussy Scholarship for Study of the Holocaust offers support for worthy and capable students and faculty of Michigan State University to engage in study of the Holocaust and its legacy. The Kussy Scholarship proivdes up to two awards of at least $1000 each offered annually by James Madison College and is intended to assist student and faculty academic projects and educational efforts that focus on the Holocaust or its legacy. It has been made possible by a donation by Jack and Henriette Warren to honor the memory of Henriette’s parents, Frank and Adelaide Kussy, and to sponser study of the Holocaust, one of the central events of the 20th century.
Frank and Adelaide Kussy Scholarship for Study of the Holocaust and Its Legacy and for Study of Genocide
The Kussy Endowment offers up to three scholarships of at least $1000 each per year for projects related to study of the Holocaust or of genocide. It is administered by James Madison College of Michigan State University.
Students (undergraduate, graduate, or post-docs) or faculty in James Madison College or in other colleges at Michigan State University who are engaged in serious academic work related to the study of the Holocaust or its legacy or on matters of the history of genocide, contemporary genocide, and genocide prevention are invited to apply.
Projects may include course work, thesis, independent study, relevant study abroad, independent research, travel to collections, or creative academic projects.
Applications will be judged on merit, student academic performance, faculty performance, contribution to knowledge, and/or contribution to society.
Applicants must apply electronically or by hard copy by January 31, 2020 to:
Office of the Dean
James Madison College
367 S. Case Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48825
Email to Katie Dyjach: dyjachk@msu.edu
The application requires:
- Proposal (a description of the proposed project or research, approximately 1,000 words)
- Discussion of the applicant’s relevant qualifications
- Brief curriculum vitae or transcript
- Letter of recommendation
- Budget
Applications should ask for no less than $1,000 and no more than $2,500. After the scholarship, undergraduate awardees will be asked to present their work at the Jewish Studies Undergraduate Research Conference in April, faculty and graduate students will be asked to give a public lecture, and all awardees will submit copies of completed projects to be kept on file at James Madison College.
Selection
A committee of three faculty members appointed by the dean, with advice from the college’s faculty affairs committee, will review applications and, under the dean’s leadership, select Kussy Award recipients. Awards are usually effective the following academic year, either for summer or academic year study but may be used in the current spring. Awards may be used for tuition, to support travel or study abroad, or for research or material costs related to the project.
Who Were Frank and Adelaide Kussy?
Frank Kussy was born Werner Franz Kussy to a Czech Jewish family in Dresden, Germany in 1910. He studied engineering at the University of Munich (1932) and earned the Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Vienna in 1936. On Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, he was arrested by the Nazis and later released. He and his family fled Germany in late August 1939, only to be trapped by the outbreak of war in Holland.
Adelaide Kussy was a teacher and a member of the Dutch resistance who assisted Frank and his family in Nazi-occupied Holland during the early 1940s. Frank, his older brother Victor, and their mother were arrested by the Nazis in November 1942 and sent to Westerbork, a Dutch transit camp.
In April 1943, they were transported to Theresienstadt, where they were prisoners until September 1944.
In September-October 1944, the Kussys were sent in boxcars to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Frank was the sole survivor, and was at Birkenau and Gleiwitz, an Auschwitz sub-camp, and was liberated by the Red Army at Blechhammer, another sub-camp, in January 1945. Following the war, Adelaide and Frank reunited, they returned to Dresden, (now) East Germany, built a new life and family together, and reclaimed the family factory.
Then, when the East Germans nationalized his business, they fled again from Germany and with their children came to the United States in the early 1950’s.
Frank Kussy had a successful career as an engineer and engineering fellow, authored several books, and served as a member of the International Executive Service Corps, consulting in Egypt and Zimbabwe. He spoke about his Holocaust experiences at James Madison College and Michigan State University on several occasions in the 1990s and was the subject of a senior thesis, My Grandfather’s Stories, written by his granddaughter Tamara Warren at James Madison College in 1998.
Frank Kussy passed away 12 days short of his 100th birthday in October 2010.
For more information please contact:
Dr. Amy Simon
Farber Chair in Holocaust Studies and European Jewish History
Michigan State University
842 Chestnut Rd.
South Case Hall, Rm. 310
East Lansing, MI 48825 USA
Email: simonamy@msu.edu
Phone: 517.884.1270