SICSA Annual Report 1996
SICSA Annual Report 1996The involvement of Vichy France with Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish policy has long been a source of debate and contention. At a time when France, after decades of denial, has finally acknowledged responsibility for its role in the deportation and murder of 75,000 Jews from France during the Holocaust, Richard H. Weisberg here provides us with a comprehensive and devastating account of the French legal system's complicity with its German occupiers during the dark period known as "Vichy." As in Germany, the exclusionary laws passed during the Vichy period normalized institutional antisemitism. Anti-Jewish laws entered the legal canon with little resistance, and private lawyers quickly absorbed the discourse of exclusion into the conventional legal framework, expanding the laws beyond their simple intentions, their literal sense, and even their German precedents. Drawing on newly-available archival sources, personal interviews, and historical research, Weisberg reveals how legalized persecution actually operated on a practical level, often exceeding German expectations. Further, he presents a persuasive argument for Vichy law as an acquired Catholic response to a false notion of Jewish Talmudism. The book also compares the Vichy experience to American legal modes of thinking ironically adopt the complexity of Vichy reasoning to a host of reading and thinking strategies. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France raises fundamental and disturbing questions about the ease with which democratic legal systems can be subverted.
The emergence in Russia of the antisemitic chauvinist movement, Pamyat, has startled Western society even as it has stirred deep fears and anxiety among Jews and democratic forces within Russia. How could a supposedly Communist society, whose founder, V. I. Lenin, had railed against racism and bigotry, give birth to a proto-fascist ideology and organization? This study seeks to respond to this understandable, if provocative, query. The roots of Pamyat's ideology can be traced to the tsarist Black Hundreds in the early part of the twentieth century, to certain aspects of Stalinism, and especially to the Soviet "anti-Zionist" campaign of 1967-1986. Although the antisemitic campaign was officially halted at the state level by Mikhail Gorbachev, the emerging Pamyat groups took advantage of the freer atmosphere of "glasnost" to continue to foster anti-Jewish hatred. These nationalistic forces remain vital elements in contemporary Russian society, inevitably raising a profound sense of concern among Jews and the general community.
Poland in the interwar period was
home to more Jews than any other country in Europe. Its commonplace but
simplistic identification with antisemitism was due largely to nationalist
efforts to boycott Jewish business. That they failed was not for want of
support by the Catholic clergy, for whom the "Jewish question"
was more than economic. The myth of a Masonic-Jewish alliance to subvert
Christian culture first flourished in France but held considerable sway
over Catholics in 1930s Poland as elsewhere. This book examines how, following
Vatican policy, Polish church leaders resisted separation of church and
state in the name of Catholic culture. In that struggle, every assimilated
Jew served as both a symbol and a potential agent of secularity. Antisemitism
is no longer regarded as a legitimate political stance. But in Europe,
the United States, and the Middle East, the issues of religious culture,
national identity, and minorities are with us still. This study of interwar
Poland will throw light on dilemmas that continue to exercise even Western
democracies.
College Theology Society Best Book Award, 1994
Papers collected here were originally
presented at a symposium on Fifty Years after the Racial Laws in Italy,
held in Jerusalem. Contains a preface by Sergio DellaPergola. Papers include:
Robert S. Wistrich, "Fascism and the Jews of Italy"; Mario Sznajder,
"The Fascist Regime, Antisemitism, and the Racial Laws in Italy";
Simonetta Della Seta, "Italian Zionism Confronts Fascism and the Racial
Laws"; and Meir Michaelis, "The Current Debate over Fascist Racial
Policy."
*SICSA Publications, Jerusalem, can be ordered directly from the Center offices:
Publications
Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Mount Scopus 91905 Jerusalem
ISRAEL
Telephone: 972-2-588-1003 * FAX: 972-2-588-1002
Studies in Antisemitism: History
Shmuel Almog, Nationalism and Antisemitism in Modern Europe, 1815Ä1945. Oxford: Pergamon, 1990. xxv + 159 pp. ISBN 0-08-377742 (pb); ISBN 0-08- 0372546 (hb)
Studies in Antisemitism Series
Robert Everett, Christianity without Antisemitism: James Parkes and the Jewish Christian Encounter. Oxford: Pergamon, 1993. xiv + 346 pp. ISBN 0-08-041040-5
Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New York: Free Press, 1993. ix + 278 pp. ISBN 0-02-919235-8
Ronald Nettler, Past Trials and Present Tribulations: A Muslim Fundamentalist's View of the Jews. Oxford: Pergamon, 1987. 104 pp. ISBN 0-08-0347916
Elisheva Revel-Neher, The Image of the Jew in Byzantine Art. Oxford: Pergamon, 1992. 200 pp. with 100 illustrations, 10 in color. ISBN 0-08-0406556
Frank Stern, The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge: Antisemitism and Philosemitism in Postwar Germany 1945-1952. Oxford: Pergamon, 1992. xxv + 455 pp. ISBN 0-08-040653X
Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s. Oxford: Pergamon, 1991. xi + 213 pp. ISBN 0-08-041- 24-3
Joint Project with the Zalman
Shazar Center for Jewish History
and The Historical Society of Israel, Jerusalem
Michel Abitbol, From Cremieux to Petain: Antisemitism in Colonial Algeria, 1870-1940 (Hebrew). Jerusalem: Shazar, 1988. 188 pp. ISBN 965-205-122-7
Shmuel Almog, Nationalism and Antisemitism in Modern Europe 1815-1945 (Hebrew). Jerusalem: Shazar, 1988. 181 pp. ISBN 965-227-051-2
Nathaniel Katzburg, Antisemitism in Hungary 1867-1944 (Hebrew). Jerusalem: Shazar, 1992. 203 pp. ISBN 965-227-082-2
Rivka Yadlin, Anti-Zionism as Anti-Judaism in Egypt (Hebrew). Jerusalem: Shazar, 1988. 157 pp. ISBN 965- 227-050-4