Robert S. Wistrich
Robert Solomon Wistrich (April 7, 1945 – May 19, 2015) was a scholar of antisemitism, considered one of the world's foremost authorities on antisemitism.[1][2]
he Erich Neuberger Professor of
Biography
Robert Wistrich was born in Lenger, in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic on April 7, 1945.[4][2] His parents were leftist Polish Jews who had moved to Lviv in 1940 in order to escape from the Germans; however, they discovered that Soviet-style totalitarianism was little better than Nazism. In 1942 they moved to Kazakhstan, where Wistrich's father was imprisoned twice by the NKVD.[2][5] After World War II, the Wistrichs returned to Poland. Later, finding the post-war environment in Poland to be dangerously anti-Semitic,[6] the family moved to France and then to England. Wistrich grew up in England, where he went to Kilburn Grammar School, where in Wistrich's words, he was taught by "Walter Isaacson, a refugee from Nazi Germany who first taught me how to think independently"[7][2] His parents later returned to Poland under a repatriation agreement between Stalin and the Polish government-in-exile.[citation needed]
In December 1962, aged 17, Wistrich won an Open Scholarship to study history at
Academic career
Between 1974 and 1980, Wistrich was Director of Research at the Institute of Contemporary History and the
Between 1991 and 1995, Wistrich was appointed the first holder of the Chair of Jewish Studies at University College London, in addition to his position at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also wrote several dramas for BBC Radio and Kol Yisrael on the lives of historical figures ranging from Leon Trotsky to Theodor Herzl. In 2003, Wistrich acted as the chief historical consultant for the BBC documentary Blaming the Jews, which explores contemporary Muslim antisemitism. He also served as the academic advisor for the controversial documentary film Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West (2005).
As head of the
He was one of six scholars who sat on the
In 2014, Wistrich authored an exhibition entitled "The 3,500 year relationships of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel". The exhibition was scheduled for display at the headquarters of UNESCO, but was canceled under pressure from Arab nations. The exhibit eventually opened six months later after the phrase "Land of Island" was replaced with "Holy Land". In response to the controversy, Wistrich said the cancellation "completely destroyed any claim that UNESCO could possibly have to be representing the universal values of toleration, mutual understanding, respect for the other and narratives that are different, engaging with civil society organizations and the importance of education."[2]
Books
Over his career, Wistrich edited and published dozens of notable books about Jews and antisemitism. In 1985 his book Socialism and the Jews won the joint award of SICSA at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the
His 2010 book A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism — From Antiquity to the Global Jihad was awarded Best Book of the Year Prize by the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism.[2]
Legacy
Wistrich died of a
At this death, he was considered the world's foremost authority on antisemitism. Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations called his death a tragic loss to "the entire Jewish community and to all those engaged in the efforts to counter resurgent antisemitism". Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, said "the world of academe has lost an outstanding scholar and historian; the world of Jewish studies has lost a seminal thinker." Charles A. Small of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy called Wistrich "a scholar committed to the sober documentation of facts and the highest caliber of scholarship."[1][2]
According to the Jerusalem Post, Wistrich was an outspoken critic of European policy regarding antisemitism and pessimistic about the future of
Wistrich was the most prolific writer on antisemitism for some decades. Scott Ury has argued that many of the core themes in Wistrich's approach to antisemitism emerged in the works of his predecessor, the polemical Ukrainian-Israeli historian Shmuel Ettinger (1919–1988) who, Ury maintains, was a pivotal figure in restoring the ideas about both antisemitism and anti-Zionism that had been current a century earlier, from
Published works
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
- Who's Who in Nazi Germany. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1982. ISBN 0-415-12723-8
- Socialism and the Jews. Oxford University Press, 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.
- 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.
- 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
- From Ambivalence to Betrayal. The Left, the Jews and Israel, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska 2012. ISBN 0803240767
References
- ^ a b c d e f g "Robert Wistrich, leading scholar of anti-Semitism, dies of heart attack". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 4 October 2015.
- ^ Times of Israel. Retrieved 16 January 2024.
- ISBN 978-3-030-51658-1.
- ^ a b Robert Wistrich, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences website, accessed August 21, 2006.
- ^ "The Jedwabne Affair" Archived 2012-12-18 at archive.today, The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University, accessed August 21, 2006.
- ISBN 978-1400060979.
- ^ (Dedication in Wistrich (2012) From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews, and Israel).
- ^ "Robert Wistrich", NATIV online, retrieved August 20, 2006.
- American Historical Review, October 2018, vol.123, 4 pp.1151-1171,pp.1157-1160.
- ^ Ury 2018 pp.1164-1166
- ^ Ury, 2018 pp.1166-1167: 'It often seems as though contemporary exchanges regarding the new anti-Semitism are little more than surrogates for ongoing political conflicts, and that the underlying diffusion and confusion between political and scholarly approaches to the study of anti-Semitism leave little room for ostensibly neutral, potentially objective, and fundamentally apolitical interpretations of the phenomenon.' p.1168
Further reading
- Michael Berkowitz "Robert S. Wistrich and European Jewish History: Straddling the Public and Scholarly Spheres" in: The Journal of Modern History 70 (March 1998) 119-136.
- Scott Ury "Strange Bedfellows? Anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Fate of 'the Jews'” American Historical Review 123, 4 (Oct. 2018) 1151-1171.
- “From Cracow to London; A Polish Jewish Odyssey” in: The Jews in Poland. Volume 2, Slawomir Kapralski ed., Cracow 1999 (Judaica Foundation Center for Jewish Culture), pp. 57–73.
- “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.
- “The Vatican on Trial”, The Jerusalem Report, 28. January 2002, pp. 4–6.,
- Gerstenfeld, Manfred. "Something rotten in the State of Europe: Anti-Semitism as a Civilizational Pathology", an interview with Robert Wistrich, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, October 1, 2004.
- "Viewpoints: Anti-Semitism and Europe", includes comment from Robert Wistrich, BBC, December 3, 2003.
- Claremont Review on Wistrich and "A Lethal Obsession" Summer 2011.
- “Antisemitism – A Civilizational Pathology”, in Manfred Gerstenfeld (ed.) Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss (Jerusalem 2005), pp. 95–110.
- “Cruel Britannia” Azure (Summer 2005), pp. 100–124.
- “Drawing the Line. On Antisemitism and anti-Zionism”, The Jewish Quarterly Nr. 198 (Summer 2005), pp. 21–24.
- “How to Tackle the New Antisemitism” in Standpoint (October 2008) pp. 74–77.
- "Interviews”, in Andrei Marga (ed.), Dialoguri (Presa Universitarǎ Clujeanǎ, 2008), pp. 221–235. In English