Robert S. Wistrich - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

‎
Robert Solomon Wistrich (April 7, 1945-) is the Neuburger Professor of European and Jewish history

Jewish history

Jewish history is the history of the Jews, their religion and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions and cultures. Since Jewish history is over 4000 years long and includes hundreds of different populations, any treatment can only be provided in broad strokes...

at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...

, and the head of the University's Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. Wistrich is "a leading scholar of the history of antisemitism."

Early life

Robert S. Wistrich was born in Lenger, Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...

on April 7, 1945.
His parents were leftist Polish Jews

History of the Jews in Poland

The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the...

who had moved to Lviv

Lviv

Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...

in 1940 to escape rampant anti-Semitism; however, they found Soviet totalitarianism little better. In 1942 they moved to Kazakhstan, where Wistrich's father was imprisoned twice by the NKVD

NKVD

The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

. His parents returned to Poland under a repatriation agreement between Stalin and the Polish government-in-exile, and later emigrated to France. The author grew up in England, where in December 1962, at the age of seventeen, he won an Open Scholarship in History to Queen’s College, Cambridge, where he also received a BA with Honours, and his MA degree in 1969. At Cambridge, he founded Circuit, a literary and arts magazine which he co-edited between 1966 and 1969. Between 1969–1970, during a study year in Israel, he became the youngest ever literary editor of New Outlook, a left-wing monthly in Tel Aviv, founded by Martin Buber

Martin Buber

Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....

Professional career

Wistrich received his Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

from the University of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

in 1974. Between 1974 and 1980, he was Director of Research at the Institute of Contemporary History and the Wiener Library

Wiener Library

The Wiener Library is the world's oldest institution devoted to the study of the Holocaust, its causes and legacies. Founded in 1933 as an information bureau that informed Jewish communities and governments worldwide about the persecution of the Jews under the Nazis, it was transformed into a...

(at that time the largest research library on the Third Reich existing in Europe) and the editor of the Wiener Library Bulletin in London. Appointed a Research Fellow of the British Academy

British Academy

The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...

, he had already authored several well-received books by the time he was given tenure at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1982. In 1985 his study of Socialism and the Jews won the joint award of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the American Jewish Committee

American Jewish Committee

The American Jewish Committee was "founded in 1906 with the aim of rallying all sections of American Jewry to defend the rights of Jews all over the world...

. His 1989 book The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph received the Austrian State Prize in History. His next study, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (1981) won the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize

Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize

JQ Wingate Prize is an annual British literary prize inaugurated in 1977. It is named after the host Jewish Quarterly and the prize's founder Harold Hyam Wingate...

in the UK a year later, and was the basis for the PBS documentary, The Longest Hatred — a three-hour TV film conceived, scripted, and edited by Wistrich. In 1993, he also scripted Good Morning, Mr. Hitler, an award-winning documentary on Nazi art commissioned by BBC Channel 4.

Between 1991 and 1995, Wistrich was appointed the first holder of the Chair of Jewish Studies at University College London

University College London

University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

, in addition to his position at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also wrote several dramas for BBC radio and Kol Israel on the lives of historical figures ranging from Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....

to Theodor Herzl

Theodor Herzl

Theodor Herzl , born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl was an Ashkenazi Jew Austro-Hungarian journalist and the father of modern political Zionism and in effect the State of Israel.-Early life:...

. In 2003, he acted as the chief historical consultant for the BBC documentary, Blaming the Jews (about contemporary Muslim antisemitism) and in 2006 he was the academic advisor for the widely viewed film: Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West
Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West
Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, also called Obsession, is a 2005 documentary film about the perceived threat of radical Islam to Western civilization. Using extensive Arab television footage it claims to give an 'insider's view' of the hatred preached by radicals to incite global...

.

He was one of six scholars who sat on the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission

International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission

The International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission was a body appointed by the Holy See's Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews in 1999. With three Jewish and three Catholic scholars, the group evaluated Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre...

from 1999 to 2001 to examine the wartime record 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....

, with special reference to the Holocaust. Since 2002, he has directed the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, and edits its journal, Antisemitism International

Selected books

Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky. Barnes & Noble Books, 1976. ISBN 0-06-497806-0
The Left Against Zion.Vallentine Mitchell & Co, 1979. ISBN 0-85303-199-1
Socialism and the Jews. Oxford University Press, 1982.
Trotsky: Fate of a Revolutionary. Stein & Day, 1982. ISBN 0-8128-2774-0
The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph. Oxford University Press, 1989.
Between Redemption and Perdition: Modern Antisemitism and Jewish Identity. Routledge, 1990. ISBN 0-415-04233-X
Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism in the Contemporary World. New York University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8147-9237-5
Antisemitism, the Longest Hatred. Pantheon, 1992.
Who's Who in Nazi Germany. Routledge, 1995. ISBN 0-415-12723-8
Terms of Survival. Routledge, 1995. ISBN 0-415-10056-9
Weekend in Munich: Art, Propaganda and Terror in the Third Reich (with Luke Holland). Trafalgar Square, 1996. ISBN 1-85793-318-4
Theodor Herzl: Visionary of the Jewish State. New York and Jerusalem: Herzl Press and Magnes Press, 1999, 390 pages.
Demonizing the Other: Antisemitism, Racism and Xenophobia. Routledge, 1999. ISBN 90-5702-497-7
Hitler and the Holocaust. Random House, 2001.
Nietzsche: Godfather of Fascism? Princeton, 2002.
Islamic Judeophobia: An Existential Threat, in Muhammad's Monsters, Balfour Books, 2004, editor David Bukay
David Bukay
David Bukay is a Professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Haifa. He is the author of Islamic Fundamentalism and the Arab Political Culture...

.
Laboratory for World Destruction. Germans and Jews in Central Europe, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska 2007. ISBN 978-0-8032-1134-6
A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism - From Antiquity to the Global Jihad, Random House, 2010. ISBN 978-1-4000-6097-9

Selected papers

“German Social Democracy and the Problem of Jewish Nationalism, 1897 1917,” Leo Baeck Yearbook 21 (1976), pp. 109 142.
“A Neo Revisionist Renaissance? Back to Bernstein,” Encounter, (July 1978), pp. 75 82.
“Historians and the Holocaust,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 55, No. 2 (1983), pp. 317 20.
“The Modernization of Viennese Jewry: The Impact of German Culture in a Multi-Ethnic State,” in: Toward Modernity: The European Model, Jacob Katz, ed., Transaction Books, 1987, pp. 43 70.
“Antisemitismus,” in Neue Lexicon des Judentums, J. H. Schoeps, ed., München: Bertelsmann Lexicon Verlag, 1992, pp. 41 47.
“Socialism and Judeophobia: Antisemitism in Europe before 1914,” Leo Baeck Yearbook, (1992), pp. 111 145.
“The Jews and Nationality Conflicts in the Habsburg Lands,” Nationalities Papers, (New York) Vol. 22, Nr. I (Spring 1994) pp. 119 141.
“Theodor Herzl,” Israel Affairs,(Spring 1995) Vol. 1. No. 3, pp. 1 37.
“Max Nordau and the Dreyfus Affair,” The Journal of Israeli History, (Tel Aviv) Vol. 16, No. 1 (1955), pp. 1-19.
“Hitler’s Helpers,” Commentary, (June 1996), pp. 51-55.
“Zionism and its Jewish `Assimilationist Critics’, 1897-1948,” Jewish Social Studies, 1998,Vol.4 No.2,pp.59-111
“The Pope, the Church and the Jews,” Commentary (April 1999), pp. 22-28.
“How to Tackle the New Antisemitism” in Standpoint (October 2008) pp.74-77. "Austria and the Legacy of the Holocaust", The American Jewish Committee, New York 1999, 56 pages.
“Austria and the Jewish Question, 1945-1950”, in: Robert B. Pynsent (ed.), The Phoney Peace. Power and Culture in Central Europe, 1945-49 (London, 2000), pp. 39-57.
“Was Nietzsche a Fascist Thinker?”, Partisan Review, 2001, 2, pp. 201-217
“The Vatican and the Shoah”, Modern Judaism, Vol. 21, Nr. 2, May 2001, pp. 83-107
“The Demise of the Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission”, Midstream, December 2001, pp. 2-5.
“Jewish Suffering, Vatican Silence”, Catholic International (Washington, D.C.), vol. 13, No. 2, May 2002, pp. 57-62., American Jewish Committee
American Jewish Committee
The American Jewish Committee was "founded in 1906 with the aim of rallying all sections of American Jewry to defend the rights of Jews all over the world...

, 2002.
“Muslims, Jews and September 11: The British Case” in Barry Kosmin and Paul Iganski (eds.) The New Anti-Semitism (London, 2003) pp. 169-191.
“The Old-New Antisemitism” The National Interest (Washington D.C.) Summer 2003, pp. 59-70., The National Interest
The National Interest
The National Interest is a prominent conservative American bi-monthly international affairs magazine published by the Center for the National Interest. It was founded in 1985 by Irving Kristol and until 2001 was edited by Anglo-Australian Owen Harries...

, Number 72, Summer 2003.
- also "The Old-New Anti-Semitism".
"The Politics of Ressentiment: Israel, Jews and the German Media". ACTA paper no. 23, The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, November 2004, 37 pages.
"Islamic Judeophobia: An Existential Threat", NATIV online, Volume 2, 2004.
“Friedrich Nietzsche and the Austrian Fin de Siecle”, in J. Golomb (ed.) Nietzsche and the Austrian Culture (Wien, 2004) pp. 42-60.
“The Jihadist Challenge”, Midstream (Nov/Dec 2004), pp. 8-12.
“The Last Testament of Sigmund Freud”, Leo Baeck Yearbook XLIX (2004), pp. 87-106.
"Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism", Jewish Political Studies Review 16:3-4, Fall 2004.
"Antisemitism in Western Europe at the Beginning of the 21st Century", World Jewish Congress Research Series, January 2005, 24 pages.
“Antisemitism – A Civilizational Pathology”, in Manfred Gerstenfeld (ed.) Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss (Jerusalem 2005) pp. 95-110., American Jewish Committee, 2005.
"The Jedwabne Affair", The Stephen Roth Institute
Stephen Roth Institute
The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism is a research institute at Tel Aviv University in Israel. It is a resource for information, provides a forum for academic discussion, and fosters research on issues concerning antisemitic and racist theories and...

for the Study of Anti-Semitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...

.
"Reinventing European Antisemitism". The American Jewish Committee, New York, 2005, 54 pages.
"Pius XII and the Shoah" in M. Zimmermann et al., Three Generations of Historians on Germans and Jews under the Nazi Regime (Magnes Press, Jerusalem 2006) pp.21-41.
"Stefan Zweig and the ‘World of Yesterday’", in Mark H. Gelber (ed.) Stefan Zweig Reconsidered – New Perspectiveson his Literary and Biographical Writings (Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2007), pages 59-77.
"Anti-Semitism and Multiculturalism: The Uneasy Connection" – Posen Papers No. 5, The Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Antisemitism, March 2007, 12 pages.
"Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: The Case of Bruno Kreisky". ACTA paper no. 30, The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, December 2007, 26 pages.
“Modernity and the Nazi Genocide” in Song Lihong (ed.), Holocaust: history and Memory (Nanjing University 2007), pp. 171-192.
“Dialogue in Hell: Zionism and its Double” in Midstream (May/June 2008), pp.9-14
“How to Tackle the New Antisemitism” in Standpoint (October 2008) pp.74-77.

Early life

Professional career

Selected books

Selected papers

Further reading