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WASHINGTON (June 1, 2010) -- The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is pleased to announce that Sarah Wildman, writing for Slate, is the 2010 recipient of the Peter R. Weitz Journalism Prize for excellence and originality in reporting on Europe and the transatlantic relationship.

Wildman has been awarded the $10,000 prize for her investigation of the International Tracing Service (ITS), the world's largest Holocaust archive in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Published in Slate, the five-piece series, called "riveting" by one judge, records her journey to the ITS in search of information on a relative's final year, entwining personal family history with the larger struggle to categorize, analyze, and understand Nazi records and survivor accounts. While her search was ultimately inconclusive, the series illustrates the difficulties facing the field and the shadow the Holocaust continues to throw over Europe. She is at work to turn the series into a book.

"The story of Bad Arolsen has been told, but not like this...with such detail, dogged pursuit, passion, and deeply felt, first-person storytelling," said another judge. "As opening the ITS ‘is a bit like completing a mosaic' of the Holocaust, in the words of the director of the Buchenwald camp memorial, so does Wildman give us a sense of the mosaic of ITS, and, hopefully, spread greater awareness of it."

Wildman writes on the intersection of culture and politics, history, and memory in Europe and America. She currently covers foreign policy and culture wars for Politics Daily, and is a regular contributor to The New York Times and Guardian, and has been on staff at The New Republic and The American Prospect. Her stories have appeared in Slate, The Washington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor, among others. Her work on Muslim integration in the West, Muslim-Jewish relations in Europe, transatlantic relationships, Holocaust studies, and the intersection of history and modernity has been aided by several fellowships, including an Arthur F. Burns Fellowship in Berlin, an American Council on Germany Fellowship, a Milena Jesenska Fellowship in Vienna, Austria (the first North American to receive this honor), and a Pew Fellowship in International Journalism (now called the International Reporting Project) at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.

The recipient of the 2010 award will be honored this July at an award luncheon at GMF's Washington, DC, headquarters. The Weitz Prize was established in 1999 in memory of Peter R. Weitz, former director of programs at GMF, for his interest in promoting coverage of European affairs by American journalists. While GMF has in the past offered two awards to distinguish junior reporters aged 35 and under from senior reporters, Wildman was the sole recipient of this year's prize.

Past Weitz Prize winners include Tara Bahrampour of The Washington Post, Nicholas Kulish of The New York Times, Andrew Higgins and Marcus Walker of the Wall Street Journal, Colin Nickerson of the Boston Globe, Sebastian Rotella of the Los Angeles Times, Craig Whitlock and Peter Finn of The Washington Post, Roger Cohen of The New York Times, and James Kitfield of National Journal. The prize is open to all journalists covering European issues for American publications.

Winners were selected by a jury of prominent American journalists: Kevin Sullivan of The Washington Post, Ted Diadiun of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Andrew Ross of the San Francisco Chronicle, Laura Rozen of Politico, and Dan Vergano of USA Today.

For more information on the Peter R. Weitz Prize and other opportunities for journalists, please contact Will Bohlen at wbohlen@gmfus.org.

The German Marshall Fund of the United States (www.gmfus.org) is a nonpartisan American public policy and grantmaking institution dedicated to promoting greater cooperation and understanding between North America and Europe. Founded in 1972 through a gift from Germany on the 25th anniversary of the Marshall Plan as a permanent memorial to the Marshall Plan assistance, GMF maintains a strong presence on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to its headquarters in Washington, DC, GMF has seven offices in Europe: Berlin, Bratislava, Paris, Brussels, Belgrade, Ankara, and Bucharest.

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