Kommandant's Girl

About Pam Jenoff

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.

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.

Jenoff remains involved in Polish-Jewish issues by writing articles and participating in a number of organizations. She has been honoured 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 Centre 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. The Kommandant's Girl is her first novel.

Author photo © Dominic Episcopo