Vintage

Pam Jenoff was born in Maryland and raised outside Philadelphia. She attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and Cambridge University in England. Upon receiving her master’s in history from Cambridge, she accepted an appointment as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. The position provided a unique opportunity to witness and participate in operations at the most senior levels of government, including helping the families of the Pan Am Flight 103 victims secure their memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, observing recovery efforts at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing and attending ceremonies to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of World War II at sites such as Bastogne and Corregidor.

Following her work at the Pentagon, Jenoff moved to the State Department. In 1996 she was assigned to the U.S. Consulate in Krakow, Poland. It was during this period that Pam developed her expertise in Polish-Jewish relations and the Holocaust. Working on matters such as preservation of Auschwitz and the restitution of Jewish property in Poland, Jenoff developed close relations with the surviving Jewish community.

She says of her debut novel, The Kommandant’s Girl: “Communism had recently ended in Eastern Europe, and it was a tremendously exciting time—the local Jewish community was truly free for the first time since before World War II. As a result, there was something of a Jewish cultural renaissance, which defied all that the Nazis and Communists had tried to do, and served as a testimony to the human spirit. Also during this period, many painful issues of the Holocaust were beginning to be openly explored. I was profoundly affected by my experiences and by the many close relationships I developed with both Jewish and Gentile Poles, and for several years after my return to the United States I had wanted to write a novel that reflected these experiences.”

Jenoff remains involved in Polish-Jewish issues by writing articles and participating in a number of organizations. She has been honored by the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, served on the board of directors of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Southern New Jersey, been appointed as a fellow to the Salzburg Seminar (Social and Economic Dimensions of Human Rights), advised the Auschwitz Jewish Center and is a member of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America.

Having left the Foreign Service in 1998 to attend law school at the University of Pennsylvania, Jenoff is now employed as an attorney in Philadelphia, where she also does pro bono and civic work focusing on at-risk youth, hunger relief and homelessness.