Léon Poliakov was a French historian who wrote extensively on the Holocaust

The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

 and anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism

Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

.

Born into a Russian Jewish family, Poliakov lived in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 and Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 until he settled in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

.

He co-founded the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, established to collate documentation relating to the persecution of Jews during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. He also assisted Edgar Faure

Edgar Faure

Edgar Faure was a French politician, essayist, historian, and memoirist.-Career:Faure was born in Béziers, Languedoc-Roussillon. He trained as a lawyer in Paris and became a member of the Bar at 27, the youngest lawyer in France to do so at the time...

 at the Nuremberg Trial. Poliakov went on to serve as director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS

Centre national de la recherche scientifique

The National Center of Scientific Research is the largest governmental research organization in France and the largest fundamental science agency in Europe....

) from 1954 until 1971.

According to historian Jos Sanchez, Poliakov was the first scholar to critically assess the disposition of Pope Pius XII

Pope Pius XII

The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....

 toward various issues connected to the Holocaust. In November 1950, Poliakov wrote "The Vatican and the 'Jewish Question' - The Record of the Hitler Period-And After," in the influential Jewish journal Commentary

Commentary (magazine)

Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...

. While this article was the first to consider the attitude of the papacy during World War II and the Holocaust, it was not until 1963, when German playwright Rolf Hochhuth

Rolf Hochhuth

Rolf Hochhuth is a German author and playwright. He is best known for his 1963 drama The Deputy and remains a controversial figure for his plays and other public comments, such as his insinuation of Pope Pius XII's sympathies for Hitler's extermination of the Jews in the 1963 play The Deputy and...

 published his play Der Stellvertreter

The Deputy

The Deputy, a Christian tragedy , also known as The Representative, is a controversial 1963 play by Rolf Hochhuth which indicts Pope Pius XII for his failure to take action or speak out against The Holocaust. It has been translated into more than twenty languages...

that discussion of Poliakov's initial investigations in this area took on worldwide significance.

Publications

• L'étoile jaune - La situation des Juifs en France sous l'Occupation - Les législations nazie et vichyssoise (Editions Grancher, October 1999 - three texts: a book of 1949, an article in Historia magazine in 1968 and a text of 1980) ISBN 2-7339-0642-9
• Harvest of Hate: The Nazi Program for the Destruction of Jews in Europe 1956
• The History of Anti-Semitism: From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews (orig. 1955; this tr. 1966; repr. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) ISBN 0-8122-1863-9
• The History of Anti-Semitism: From Mohammed to the Marranos (orig. 1961; tr. 1973; repr. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) ISBN 0-8122-1864-7, ISBN 0-8122-3767-6
• The History of Anti-Semitism: From Voltaire to Wagner (orig. 1968; tr. 1975; repr. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) [preview at Google Books ISBN 0-8122-1865-5
• The History of Anti-Semitism: Suicidal Europe. 1870-1933 (orig. 1977; tr. 1984; repr. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) [preview at Google Books ISBN 0-8122-3769-2
• The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalistic Ideas In Europe (Barnes & Noble Books (1996)) ISBN 0-7607-0034-6
• Jews Under the Italian Occupation (coauthored with Jacques Sabille) (Howard Fertig; 1st American ed edition (December, 1983)) ISBN 0-86527-344-8
• «Moscou, troisième Rome» Moscow, The third Rome
• «L`Auberge des musiciens» (memoir)
• «L`envers du Destin» (autobiography)
• "De l'antisionisme à l'antisémitisme" (1969)

See also

• Schneour Zalman Schneersohn
  Schneour Zalman Schneersohn
  Schneour Zalman Schneersohn was a French Hasidic Chief Rabbi, before moving in his late years to the United States...