Recommended Reading

It would be almost too obvious to say that this is a timely book. With the resurgence of overt antisemitism in recent years—not least the online proliferation of "cultural Marxist" as a thinly veiled alt-right slur—Paul Hanebrink's excavation of the Jews-as-communists myth arrives at a grimly appropriate time. Primarily focused on East Central Europe while also pulling in material from across the continent, the result is an engaged and sophisticated genealogy of one specific strand of antisemitic paranoia. As the book adeptly illustrates, the assumption that communism was a Jewish plot was "a core ele­ment of counterrevolutionary, antidemo­cratic, and racist ideologies in many dif­ferent countries" (p. 4). Thus, apprehending the myth of "Judeo-Bolshevism" is necessary for understanding the nature of Far-Right politics in both the past and present.

In this clearly written, cogently argued and researched book, eminent historian Peter Hayes challenged the widely held assertion that the Holocaust is unfathomable and inexplicable.

Divided into five thematic sections, this handbook draws on the work of forty-seven Holocaust scholars.

In 2015, the JFR in conjunction with the University of Nebraska Press and Professor Peter Hayes, published How Was It Possible? A Holocaust Reader. How Was It Possible? is the cornerstone text for the JFR’s national Holocaust teacher education program and is the primary text for our annual Summer Institute for Teachers.

Utilizes testimony, Nazi documentation, and memoirs to expose the ways in which Jewish women became victims of sexual violence during the Holocaust.