Dr. Robert Rozett

Antisemitism on College Campuses

The recent media coverage of the events that unfolded after Rutgers University condemned antisemitism, the University’s qualification of the condemnation, followed by the latest statement by the University president that condemned it again, but linked it to a series of other societal hatreds, is indicative of a deeply problematic tendency that has continued to grow. It seems that for a great many people antisemitism can only be discussed legitimately if it is linked to other forms of... Continue reading

A Tapestry of Words

The building blocks upon which we strive to reconstruct and understand the historical past, including the Holocaust, are primarily words; words supplemented with personal images and artifacts, which, in turn, we explain with words. It was with words – and images – that the Nazis and their adherents articulated their extreme antisemitic hatred and fanned its flames. With words they determined all Jews to be their archenemies and blamed them for all of the ills of society as they perceived... Continue reading

The Unprecedented Nature of the Holocaust and its Unique Features: Some Reflections - Part II

Up until now we reviewed some aspects of the unprecedented and unique nature of the Holocaust. In this part we will further explore those qualities, as well as others that have precedents in human history, and the implications of both. Why is it important to try to discern what is new to the consciousness of people during the Shoah?  Perhaps most saliently, understanding how events unfolded and how they were perceived goes to the heart of any discussion about response during the Holocaust –... Continue reading

The Unprecedented Nature of the Holocaust and its Unique Features: Some Reflections - Part I

One can probably say about every historical event that it has elements that are rooted in the past and similarities with past events, and at the same time has elements that are new and unprecedented.  Of course, the proportions of old and new, differ from event to event.  For example, World War I, is regarded by most historians as the first modern war because of the new technologies used, and the up-to-that-time unprecedented scale of carnage.  Yet some of the modern aspects we associate... Continue reading

Holocaust Education Resolution for the New Year: Uniting for the Sake of Future Generations

The late Holocaust scholar and survivor Professor Israel Gutman, a founder of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and author of the first Israeli textbook for teaching the Holocaust, used to say that the Holocaust refuses to be relegated the past; rather, it is a topic that is very much part of our present. Over the past seventy-five years, Holocaust education has grown exponentially all around the world.... Continue reading

Combating Online Antisemitism in the Digital Universe

Recently, Facebook declared a readiness to "update their hate speech policy to prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust." This is a very significant change in policy that should be applauded, but it also should be recognized that to implement it effectively entails many challenges.   Yad Vashem welcomed Facebook's announcement regarding an update to their hate speech policy to prohibit all forms of Holocaust denial and distortion on its platform. (The full statement). Yad... Continue reading

Unknown Heroes from the Holocaust Years - Peretz Revesz: Part III

This blog was originally published in the Times of Israel. Part Three: From Summer 1944 through the Soviet Conquest of Budapest and after During the Holocaust, Jewish activists in Slovakia and Hungary as well as across much of Nazi occupied territories in Europe and North Africa, displayed courage, ingenuity and great intensity as they engaged in a torturous struggle to rescue Jews from the hands of German and their collaborators. Peretz Revesz was one such person who acted courageously and... Continue reading

Unknown Heroes from the Holocaust Years - Peretz Revesz : Part II

This blog was originally published in the Times of Israel Part Two: Confronting the Full Force of Destruction – Spring 1944 During the Holocaust there were many Jews who acted at great risk to themselves to help save fellow Jews in danger. Many of these figures are relatively unknown to the public. In my previous blog I began to feature one such story, that of Peretz Revesz a rescue activist in Slovakia and Hungary. 1944: German Occupation of Hungary By the eve of the German occupation of... Continue reading

Unknown Heroes from the Holocaust Years: Peretz Revesz

In this blog and in two subsequent blogs, I will address the figure Peretz Revesz and how he helped save fellow Jews in Hungary during the Holocaust. This blog was originally published in the Times of Israel Part One: From Slovakian Zionist Youth leader to Hungarian Rescue Activist I never actually met Peretz Revesz, although in the last years of his life I spoke to him quite a few times on the phone. Back in the 1980s when I was working on my MA thesis and PhD. dissertation on Jewish... Continue reading

The Race Against the Clock: Rescue by Jews in Budapest

At the end of WWII, approximately half of the Jewish population of Budapest had survived the onslaught of Nazi occupation and the fierce fighting surrounding the Soviet conquest of the city – the largest rescue of a Jewish community in all of Europe. All this had taken place in just under a year – from March 1944 to February 1945 – and while much of the credit for Jewish survival is given to the courageous efforts of neutral diplomats who used their prestigious positions to protect Jewish... Continue reading

Commemorating the Murder of Jews, Avoiding Responsibility

There is a strong trend in Hungary today to present the destruction of Hungarian Jewry during the Holocaust as an exclusively German crime and, except for a small group of Hungarian thugs, to ignore the role and responsibility of the Hungarian authorities and society.  Against this background, the announcement, just before the Rosh Hashanah holiday, of the renewal of the House of Fates Museum project in Budapest, is cause for serious concern, given what is known about this project's planned... Continue reading

A Day of Infamy

On December 8, 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – (is) a date which will live in infamy.” Of course he was talking about the Japanese surprise attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, the attack that catapulted the United States into the Second World War 70 years ago. Catapulted is right, because beforehand, the clear majority of Americans did not want to see their husbands, fathers and sons embroiled in another war on a distant continent. Only... Continue reading

A Sober Assessment

The celebration is over and the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has come and gone. Now is the time for more sober assessments. Especially regarding the place of the Holocaust in much of the former Communist bloc, some serious issues remain to be resolved. In the search for a useable past, dissidents, anti-Communists and nationalists are generally regarded as heroes. In some cases, they are genuine. Andrei Sakharov comes to mind as one such courageous individual who fought for freedom... Continue reading

Reflections on the Demjanjuk Trial - 2009

The Demjanjuk trial is opening tomorrow in Germany. Unquestionably trials centered on crimes committed during the Holocaust serve as significant forums for bringing the history of that era to the public’s attention. They provide an opportunity to highlight not only events but to explore society-wide and individual responsibility for the atrocities that were committed during the Holocaust. Such trials remind us of the cavernous pitfalls inherent in eschewing basic moral norms to achieve... Continue reading

The Holocaust in the Age of Genocide

On January 27th the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was adopted by the United Nations in November 2005. In many venues Holocaust Remembrance Day has become a day not only to commemorate the Holocaust, the systematic murder of some six million innocent Jews by the Nazis and their partners during World War II, but a day to mark the tragedies of others who were victimized during the war, as well as victims of other instances of genocide in the 20th and 21st centuries.... Continue reading

Personal Memories - Prof. David Bankier, obm

Since David Bankier (z”l) passed away last week, I’ve been trying to remember when we first met. I have clear memories of him giving me rides out of Yad Vashem in the early 1980s when we both gave lectures in what was then called the Education Department. I can’t recall if this was as early as the summer of 1981 when I began there, or somewhat later. I do recall that David was well along in his doctoral work and I was just at the beginning. I also have a clear recollection of him... Continue reading

In Memoriam - Elly Dlin

Elliott (Elly) Dlin passed a way from a massive heart attack last week. He was 57 years old. Elly began his career in the field of Holocaust Education and Museums at Yad Vashem in 1978. Along with a changing cast that included Shalmi Barmore, Yehiam Weitz, Itzik Mais, David Silberklang, Yaacov Lozowick, Michael Yaron, Shoshie Rozin, Adina Drechsler and myself, he was the heart of the then Education Department at Yad Vashem throughout the 1980s. In the early 1990s, he became the Director of the... Continue reading

Remember the Holocaust and Soviet Crimes Separately

A number of European countries, under the direction of the continental wide parliament, now commemorate the crimes of the Nazis and the crimes of the Soviets together. The date designated for this is August 23, the day in 1939 when the Nazis and the Soviets signed a pact that essentially gave them the green light to gobble up most of Poland, an act which resulted in the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. This endeavor to merge the crimes of the two regimes into one common memory is... Continue reading

Conscripted Slaves: Hungarian Jewish Forced Laborers on the Eastern Front during World War II

For the vast majority of Hungarian Jews, their family history includes the story of their fathers, sons, brothers and husbands who were drafted into the Labor Service to perform forced labor during the Holocaust. A large percentage of Jewish Labor Service draftees (some 45,000 out of about 100,000) were sent with the Hungarian Second Army to the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, primarily from spring 1942 until the summer 1944. Subjected to grinding brutality on the front, the Jewish... Continue reading

Getting back to the basics about the Holocaust

June 22 is day we all need to remember. On this day in summer 1941 Nazi Germany attacked its ally, the Soviet Union. It was the start of a new and extraordinarily bloody and destructive phase of the Second World War. It was the move that ultimately contributed more than anything else to Hitler’s downfall. Like Napoleon before him, Hitler and his armies could not bring “Russia,” to her knees, and in this “Russia” was helped by her ally “General Winter,” the savage cold – for... Continue reading

Reading the ‘Protocols’ in Athens

The “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” were authored by the Czarist secret police during the last years of the 19th century, primarily to support the Russian regime’s virulently anti-Semitic policies. They are purported to be the minutes of a secret meeting between Jewish leaders who discussed their attempt to take over the world. Especially during the period straddling World War I, the “Protocols” began to spread far and wide, and in 1920 were even notoriously published by the... Continue reading

The Little Known Uprising – Warsaw Ghetto January 1943

Seventy years ago, on January 18, 1943, in the Warsaw Ghetto, a group of Jews attacked German forces who were rounding up Jews for deportation to the extermination camps.   Although nearly all the Jewish attackers were killed in the ensuing fight, the experience gave hope to the Jews in the ghetto and prepared the groundwork for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April. Here's a piece by Dr. Robert Rozett, Director of the Yad Vashem Libraries, about the significance of this little known battle.... Continue reading

The Holocaust Began With Elections

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. 80 years later, Robert Rozett reflects on the legacy of that day.  You can read more about it in his piece published in Haaretz: The Holocaust began with elections On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yad Vashem's Dr. Robert Rozett reminds us that Hitler exploited democracy to come to power. Elections alone do not mean a society protects the civil liberties of the individual, their dignity or even their right to life; but... Continue reading

ISIS, Nazis and the Ideology of Hate

As more news of the atrocities being perpetrated  by the Islamic State becomes publicly known, Dr. Robert Rozett sheds insight onto the dangers inherent in ISIS's ideology. It would be eminently reasonable to suppose that the kind of evil embodied by the Nazis and their radical ideology of hate and exclusion should have disappeared from the face of the earth along with the total defeat of the Third Reich nearly seventy years ago. Such Ideologies, however, did not die out with the end of the... Continue reading

That Refugee Crisis and This Refugee Crisis

In spring 1938, on the heels of five years of persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany that had recently extended to newly annexed Austria, it was clear that Europe, and the world, were in the throes of a severe refugee crisis. The term "refugee crisis" was essentially a euphemism, since it was not an amorphous situation, but rather circumstances resulting directly from masses of Jews fleeing dire Nazi persecution.  Of course this was still nearly three years before systematic mass murder would... Continue reading

David Cesarani (1956-2015)

"A Scholar of Tremendous Depth and Breadth" Yesterday evening, I heard the sad news that my dear friend and colleague Professor David Cesarani of Royal Holloway in London had passed away unexpectedly. David was a scholar of tremendous depth and breadth, great brilliance and remarkable eloquence. It often seemed to me that having had the privilege to study with the great George Mosse (as I had), David had learned one of the most important tasks of the historian: to deflate myths and replace them... Continue reading

Historical Atlases and the Holocaust

For most scholars born in the American Midwest the task of locating the exact boundaries of a place like the Pripet Marshes and determining whether they are in Podolia, Volhynia, present-day Belarus, or the Ukraine may seem daunting. For such a person—like any person interested in understanding events that happened in a specific location or geographic area—maps are obviously an important tool. In the research of events such as the Holocaust, which took place over a period of several years... Continue reading

Racism and Antisemitism: Defining the Terms

Philosophy that attributes a person or group’s character, abilities, appearance, intelligence, and behavior to race – usually defined as a population with traits in common. Racists divide the world into “superior” and “inferior” races, and believe that, by nature and fate, the superior peoples have the right to dominate the inferior. Before World War II racism began to exert great influence on the policies of political movements in Europe, especially those of the Nazi Party in... Continue reading

David Cesarani (1956–2015)A Historian with Breadth, Depth, and the Flair of a Raconteur

The untimely passing of Professor David Cesarani struck his closest friends in Jerusalem like the proverbial bolt of lightning on a clear day. Not that we were unware that he had been diagnosed with bone cancer and had undergone the necessary surgery. But from communications with him and his family, it looked like the surgery had been successful and he was well on the road to full recovery. The prognosis — especially given the excellent shape he seemed to be in as a marathon runner and... Continue reading

Recognizing Radical Evil

The twentieth century was replete with superfluous wars, so much so that today many people in the West have developed a well intentioned and deeply ingrained knee jerk reaction against all wars. In the age of “post” everything, awareness of history and recognition of the crucial role of context for understanding our world have been largely eschewed for a fragmented and disjointed approach that leads to distortion, and confusion, and has greatly impaired our ability to make meaningful... Continue reading

When Denying History is Incitement to Violence

As an historian of the Holocaust, the idea of legislating historical truth does not sit well with me. History is a subject of academic inquiry in which there are often divergent opinions. Having and expressing different ideas lie at the heart of academic freedom. What is being said by a scholar of history can really only be measured by one criteria – is it anchored in the documentation and is the interpretation being offered as unbiased as possible? As far as the members of the general public... Continue reading

Are the Palestinians Really Paying for the Holocaust?

Frequently it is asserted that the Palestinians and Arabs are paying for the Holocaust. This claim, however, has no foundation in the historical record. Certainly it is the Jews who paid for the Holocaust with the blood of some six million innocent victims - not the perpetrators, not the bystanders and not Arabs in Palestine or anywhere else. Alleging that the Palestinians are paying for the Holocaust falsely presupposes that the Jewish tie to the Land of Israel became significant only in the... Continue reading

Fragments of Memory: The Faces behind the Documents, Artifacts and Photographs

"I bought this prayer book in Auschwitz for a portion of my daily bread ration. It accompanied me through the entire torturous journey in the death and concentration camps in Germany. I donate this prayer book today to Yad Vashem – as a reminder to future generations."Holocaust survivor Zvi KopolovichDuring the Shoah, an entire universe was shattered and dispersed in myriad directions. The remaining scattered fragments vary infinitely in size, shape and texture – from... Continue reading

Bearing Witness

“There is much talk about keeping a journal. Everyone believes there is a great deal that needs to be documented, things that don’t happen in normal life... I sometimes want to take a pencil and do something with it, record some of what lies in the depths of my heart, a relentless force deep within my soul which lays beneath my consciousness.” Extract from a diary by a young female prisoner in a forced labor camp during WWII Long before liberation, the Jews who experienced the Holocaust... Continue reading