Antisemitism Before And Since The Holocaust

Divided into five discrete sections, this book examines the issue of Holocaust denial, and in some cases "Holocaust inversion" in North America, Europe, and the Middle East and its relationship to the history of antisemitism before and since the Holocaust. It thus offers both a historical and contemporary perspective. This volume includes observations by leading scholars, delivering powerful, even controversial essays by scholars who are reporting from the ‘frontline.’ It offers a discussion on the relationship between Christianity and Islam, as well as the historical and contemporary issues of antisemitism in the USA, Europe, and the Middle East. This book explores how all of these issues contribute consciously or otherwise to contemporary antisemitism. The chapters of this volume do not necessarily provide a unity of argument – nor should they. Instead, they expose the plurality of positions within the academy and reflect the robust discussions that occur on the subject.

An important new study on a complex and highly controversial topic. Albert Lindemann provides a clear and balanced guide to anti-Semitism from ancient times right through to the twentieth-century inter-war period and the Nazi Holocaust. He looks at all countries where anti-Semitism manifested itself at different times and in different ways xxx; in Russia, the US, Poland, England, Germany, South Africa, and Holland. Throughout he asks difficult and unfamiliar questions to challenge long held and misguided beliefs. An important new study which fills a gap in current literature.

William I. Brustein offers the first truly systematic comparative and empirical examination of anti-Semitism within Europe before the Holocaust. Brustein proposes that European anti-Semitism flowed from religious, racial, economic, and political roots, which became enflamed by economic distress, rising Jewish immigration, and socialist success. To support his arguments, Brustein draws upon a careful and extensive examination of the annual volumes of the American Jewish Year Books and more than 40 years of newspaper reportage from Europe's major dailies. The findings of this informative book offer a fresh perspective on the roots of society's longest hatred.

"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is almost certainly fiction, but its impact was not. Originating in Russia, it landed in the English-speaking world where it caused great consternation. Much is made of German anti-semitism, but there was fertile soil for "The Protocols" across Europe and even in America, thanks to Henry Ford and others.

Summarizes the history of antisemitism from ancient times until 1933. Queries whether antisemitism is primarily the product of fantasies about Jews that were engendered by pre-Christian and Christian beliefs, or whether there is something about Jews themselves that has provoked hostility against them; emphasizes that explaining antisemitism does not justify it. Suggests that there is a middle ground between blaming the Jews and blaming the non-Jews. The relationship between the two is an interplay of fantasy and reality on the part of both. Many wild fantasies of antisemites were sometimes fed by realities. Notes that the Jews were not always a persecuted minority. In some periods their situation was good; in other periods, conflicts between Jews and non-Jews did not exceed "normal" conflicts of the time. Chimerical beliefs concerning the Jews (including racism and "Jewish communism") could be not only antisemitic but also philosemitic. Antisemitism surged in 19th-century Europe as a by-product of Jewish demographic, economic, and political expansion. World War I and the Russian Revolution brought on myths about the Jews' striving for world power - a myth that had a touch of reality. Objects to applying the Nazi paradigm to pre-Nazi antisemitism. No anti-Jewish writer of the late 19th-early 20th centuries can be regarded as a proto-Nazi - none of them called for the extermination of the Jews.

Since the 9/11/01 attacks on America, anti-Semitism has been on the rise, its roots firmly anchored in centuries-old prejudices. Schweitzer and Perry analyze the lies, misperceptions, and myths about Jews and Judaism that have been spread throughout the centuries. Beginning in antiquity and continuing into the present day, the authors explore major anti-Semitic themes: Jews as murderers of Christ; Jews as both evil capitalists and evil communists; the “myth” of the Holocaust; and the Nation of Islam’s hatred of the Jews. This is an eye-opening piece of work that, sadly, is still needed today.

“In The Ruined House a ‘small harmless modicum of vanity’ turns into an apocalyptic bonfire. Shot through with humor and mystery and insight, Ruby Namdar's wonderful first novel examines how the real and the unreal merge. It's a daring study of madness, masculinity, myth-making and the human fragility that emerges in the mix." —Colum McCann, National Book Award-winning author of Let the Great World Spin Winner of the Sapir Prize, Israel’s highest literary award Picking up the mantle of legendary authors such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, an exquisite literary talent makes his debut with a nuanced and provocative tale of materialism, tradition, faith, and the search for meaning in contemporary American life. Andrew P. Cohen, a professor of comparative culture at New York University, is at the zenith of his life. Adored by his classes and published in prestigious literary magazines, he is about to receive a coveted promotion—the crowning achievement of an enviable career. He is on excellent terms with Linda, his ex-wife, and his two grown children admire and adore him. His girlfriend, Ann Lee, a former student half his age, offers lively companionship. A man of elevated taste, education, and culture, he is a model of urbanity and success. But the manicured surface of his world begins to crack when he is visited by a series of strange and inexplicable visions involving an ancient religious ritual that will upend his comfortable life. Beautiful, mesmerizing, and unsettling, The Ruined House unfolds over the course of one year, as Andrew’s world unravels and he is forced to question all his beliefs. Ruby Namdar’s brilliant novel embraces the themes of the American Jewish literary canon as it captures the privilege and pedantry of New York intellectual life in the opening years of the twenty-first century.

The denial of the Holocaust has no more credibility than the assertion that the earth is flat. Yet there are those who insist that the death of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps is nothing but a hoax perpetrated by a powerful Zionist conspiracy. Sixty years ago, such notions were the province of pseudohistorians who argued that Hitler never meant to kill the Jews, and that only a few hundred thousand died in the camps from disease; they also argued that the Allied bombings of Dresden and other cities were worse than any Nazi offense, and that the Germans were the “true victims” of World War II. For years, those who made such claims were dismissed as harmless cranks operating on the lunatic fringe. But as time goes on, they have begun to gain a hearing in respectable arenas, and now, in the first full-scale history of Holocaust denial, Deborah Lipstadt shows how—despite tens of thousands of living witnesses and vast amounts of documentary evidence—this irrational idea not only has continued to gain adherents but has become an international movement, with organized chapters, “independent” research centers, and official publications that promote a “revisionist” view of recent history. Lipstadt shows how Holocaust denial thrives in the current atmosphere of value-relativism, and argues that this chilling attack on the factual record not only threatens Jews but undermines the very tenets of objective scholarship that support our faith in historical knowledge. Thus the movement has an unsuspected power to dramatically alter the way that truth and meaning are transmitted from one generation to another.