New Writings on the Holocaust, 2012–2024 (March 2025)

This essay first appeared in the March 2025 issue of Choice (volume 62 | issue 7).

Posted on April 14, 2025 in Bibliographic Essays

Introduction:

In the aftermath of Germany’s defeat in World War I, anti-Semitic political parties such as the National Social-ist Party blamed the country’s loss on the Jews. This charge was reinforced by the canard that the loyalty of the Jews in Germany crossed geographical boundaries wherein their allegiance to one another across Europe’s Jewish population transcended their loyalty to the nation of their birth. The seeds of the Holocaust were also rooted in the fact that between the late nineteenth century and 1933, the German state perpetrated the pseudo-science of racial superiority. Jews were viewed as inferior in a country that prized itself on its citizens’ Aryan descent. During the Weimar Republic (1919–33), racist German political parties accused Jews of profiting from the country’s wartime defeat and weakening the nation’s moral fabric by Bolshevizing its social and cultural life. The achievements of Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, and other Jewish scientists were attacked as promoting what Josef Goebbels called “Jewish science.” The National Socialist Party, in particular, associated Jews with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and viewed the prominence of Jews in the cultural life of the Weimar Republic as proof of their efforts to undermine the Aryan roots of German life. This was the setting that pre-pared Germany for the rise of Adolf Hitler, who promised to redeem Germany from the “parasitical” Jews and restore the nation to its former glory. This study considers works published on this enduringly important topic since 2012. It updates the essay “New Writings on the Holocaust, 2000–2011,” which appeared in the May 2012 issue of Choice.

About the Author:

Jack Fischel is Emeritus Professor of History at Millersville University. He is the author/editor of nine books on the Holocaust and the founder and director of Millersville’s annual conference on the Holocaust.

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