October 15, 2023
“Fighting Fascism: Jewish Responses from the Interwar Period to the Present Day marks the 90th anniversary of the Nazi seizure of power in Germany by examining how Jews in Europe and the United States responded to fascism from the 1920s up to the present day. Co-hosted by the American Jewish Historical Society and the Center for Jewish History, today’s program brings together scholars and experts from across the country and the globe to address the many ways that Jewish people throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first century combatted far-right extremism, often at their own peril, through methods like economic boycotts, political activism, the arts, espionage, and more. The symposium is generously sponsored by Leonard L. Milberg with additional support from The Achelis & Bodman Foundation and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
As immortalized in the concluding line of T. S. Eliot’s 1925 poem, “The Hollow Men,” the idea that “the world ends not with a bang but a whimper” has long evoked the fractured world that produced fascism. But what is fascism? Our opening session tackles this vexing question as a springboard for the rest of the day’s events. Panelists will discuss the differences between fascism and other rightwing movements, such as Nazism and conservative authoritarianism, by exploring their ideological and historical origins from the interwar period up to the present. Panelists will further discuss the important role of antisemitism in classical and contemporary forms of fascism.
“I do not enjoy Herr Hitler’s acquaintance,” said Albert Einstein in response to questions about the Nazi leader’s sudden rise to political prominence in 1930. “He is living on the empty stomach of Germany. As soon as conditions improve, “ Einstein posited, “he will no longer be important.” These words would come back to haunt Einstein as Nazism, fascism, and other rightwing movements spread across Europe. Panelists will discuss how European Jews initially responded to these movements and examine how those responses evolved as Europe descended into war in 1939. *
In a 1939 Saturday Evening Post article entitled “Star-Spangled Fascists,” journalist Stanley High wrote: “One of the ominous distinctions of American fascism is that, without benefit of a Mussolini, a Hitler or even an Oswald Mosley, it continues to prosper and spread.” As fascism spread across Europe, it was also embraced by a small but vocal number of Americans, including high profile figures in the worlds of business and politics. This panel will examine the threat posed by fascist groups in the United States, such as the German American Bund, the Christian Front, and the Silver Shirts, and will survey the responses offered by Jewish Americans, whether in the form of political activism, espionage, or journalism.
“He could hardly read or write,” wrote Primo Levi in his memoir If This is a Man: Survival in Auschwitz, “but his heart spoke the language of the good.” Throughout the 1930s and in the decades that followed, the arts were essential tools in the fight against fascism. Jews were especially active in this fight, employing film, art, comic books, and other media against the fascist threat. This panel explores antifascist themes in the work of Jewish cultural figures during the interwar era and examines how this tradition continues today.
Throughout World War II and in its immediate aftermath, American Jewish leaders and antifascist groups implored Americans to help defeat what the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights called “a monstrous gang — in the name of humanity and for the preservation of all we hold dear.” As the Allied powers faced the daunting task of repairing a world ravaged by total war, neofascist movements began to sprout around the globe. Panelists will explore the fluctuating strength of fascism after 1945 by examining the reappearance of far right parties in the U. S. and Europe and exploring how Jewish and non-Jewish groups responded to them.
Samantha Baskind, Distinguished Professor of Art History at Cleveland State University, is the author of five books, most recently The Warsaw Ghetto in American Art and Culture. She co-edited The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches, the foundational volume in the field. Additional publications include over 100 articles and reviews, mainly on Jewish art. Articles in the mainstream press have appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, Washington Post, and TIME. She served as editor for U.S. art for the 22-volume revised edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica and is currently series editor of “Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination,” published by Penn State University Press.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University. She writes about fascism, authoritarianism, and propaganda. She is the recipient of Guggenheim and other fellowships, an advisor to Protect Democracy, and an MSNBC opinion columnist. She appears frequently on MSNBC, PBS, and other networks. Her latest book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (2020; paperback, 2021), looks at how illiberal leaders examines how illiberal leaders use corruption, violence, propaganda, and machismo to stay in power, and how resistance to them has unfolded over a century. She publishes Lucid, a newsletter on threats to democracy. She is also a consultant for television and films, most recently Guillermo del Toro’s Academy Award-winning movie Pinocchio, which is set in Fascist Italy.
Gemma Birnbaum is the executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society and previously served as AVP for media and education at the National WWII Museum. She is also an Emmy- nominated writer and producer of several documentary films and podcast series on World War II.
Michael Brenner is Distinguished Professor of History, Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies, and director of the Center for Israel Studies at American University. He also holds the chair of Jewish History and Culture at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and serves as International President of the Leo Baeck Institute for the Study of German-Jewish History. In 2020 he was the first recipient of the first Baron Award for Scholarly Excellence in Research of the Jewish Experience. He has published widely on German-Jewish history and Israel. His latest publication is In Hitler’s Munich: Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism, (Princeton University Press 2022).
Matthew Dallek is a historian and professor of political management at George Washington University. He is the author of three books including, most recently, Birchers. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, and other publications. He lives in Washington, DC.
A cultural historian with a special interest in Hollywood cinema, Thomas Doherty is a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University. He is also the film review editor for the Journal of American History. His books include Hollywood and Hitler 1933-1939, Show Trial: >Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist, and Little Lindy Is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century. He is currently working on a book about the rise of the archival documentary in 1930s America. He lives with his wife Sandra in Salem, Massachusetts, and he strongly suggests you do not visit there in October.
Marc Dollinger holds the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Social Responsibility at San Francisco State University. He is author of four scholarly books in American Jewish history, most recently Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s.
Anna Duensing is a historian of the U.S. and the world, specializing in African American history, transnational social movements, and the evolving global politics of white supremacy across the twentieth century. She received her Ph.D. in History and African American Studies and an M.A. concentration in Public Humanities from Yale University and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African- American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. She is currently working on her first book manuscript, tentatively entitled Fascism Is Already Here: Civil Rights and the Making of a Black Antifascist Tradition.
Philip I. Eliasoph is Special Assistant to the President for Arts & Culture at Fairfield University, Connecticut. Beyond his faculty role spanning five decades as Professor of Art History & Visual Culture, he serves as founding director of the university’s Walsh Art Gallery, stage moderator of the Open Visions Forum community public affairs lectures, founder of the Florence Study Campus, host of the Bennett Lectureship in Judaic Studies, and teaches Jewish art history for the Roberts Endowed Lectureship. Currently his interests are focused on reassessing the political satire of Arthur Szyk in conjunction with Berkeley’s Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, on loan for the Fairfield University Art Museum exhibition featuring Szyk’s anti-fascist propaganda.
Federico Finchelstein is Professor of History at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College. He taught at the History Department of Brown University, and he received his PhD at Cornell University. Finchelstein is Director of the Janey Program in Latin American Studies at NSSR. He is the author of seven books on fascism, populism, Dirty Wars, the Holocaust, and Jewish history in Latin America and Europe. His books include Fascist Mythologies (2022); A Brief History of Fascist Lies (2020), From Fascism to Populism in History (2017), and The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War: Fascism, Populism, and Dictatorship in Twentieth-Century Argentina (2014).
Jeffrey S. Gurock is the Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University, His latest book is Marty Glickman; The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend (NYU Press, 2023).
ADL’s Deputy National Director, Kenneth Jacobson, serves in several capacities, including representing ADL when CEO Jonathan Greenblatt is not available, writing extensively on ADL subjects, speaking to groups across the country, and educating ADL staff and volunteer leaders about the history and legacy of the organization. Ken joined ADL in 1971. He has served in many roles, including leading the International Affairs, Civil Rights, Marketing and Communications, and Education divisions at various times. Ken has a BA in history from Yeshiva University and an MA in history from Columbia University.
Shira Klein, Associate Professor and Chair of History at Chapman University, focuses on Italian Jewish history. Her book Italy’s Jews from Emancipation to Fascism (Cambridge University Press, 2018) was selected finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award and is under contract to be published in Hebrew. Dr. Klein also works in the digital humanities. Her co-authored article “Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust” has surpassed 44,000 views and attracted media coverage in a dozen languages. Dr. Klein has received grants from the NEH, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, USC Shoah Foundation, and the Barbieri Endowment.
Kenneth B. Moss is the Harriet and Ulrich E. Meyer Professor of Jewish History at the University of Chicago. He is the author of the prize-winning works An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland and Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution, both from Harvard University Press, co-editor of From Europe’s East to the Middle East (UPenn, 2021), and co-editor with Israel Bartal of volume 7 of the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization: National Renaissance and International Horizons, 1880– 1918, forthcoming from Yale this year.
Gavriel D. Rosenfeld is President of the Center for Jewish History and Professor of History at Fairfield University. He the author of numerous books on the history and memory of the Nazi era, including the co-edited volume (with Janet Ward), Fascism in America: Past and Present (Cambridge, 2023), The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present (Cambridge, 2019), and Hi Hitler! How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture (Cambridge, 2015. He is also an editor at the Journal of Holocaust Research.
Steven J. Ross is Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the University of Southern California’s Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life. His recent book, Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America was named a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History for 2018 and has been on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List for 23 weeks. It was also made into a documentary for French television, Leon Lewis, the Man Who Defeated the Nazis in Hollywood (English title). Ross’s current book, The Secret War AgainstHate:AmericanResistanceto White Supremacy After 1945, will be published by Bloomsbury Press.
Helmut Walser Smith is the Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of History at Vanderbilt University and an NEH Scholar in Residence at the Center for Jewish History. He is the author of several books, including German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870- 1914, The Butcher’s Tale: Murder and Antisemitism in a German Town (W.W. Norton, 2002), The Continuities of German History (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and Germany: A Nation in its Time: Before, During, and After Nationalism (W.W. Norton/Liveright, 2020). Over the years, his research has been supported by the NEH, the DAAD, the Volkswagen Foundation, the Humboldt Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Jeffrey Veidlinger is Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of four award-winning books on the history of Jewish life in Russia and Ukraine, including, most recently, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust. He currently serves as Chair of the Center for Jewish History’s Academic Advisory Council.
Chris Vials is a Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where he also served as Director of American Studies from 2015-2022. Since 2012, his research has focused squarely on antifascist and fascist currents in the United States. He is the author of Haunted by Hitler: Liberals, the Left, and the Fight against Fascism in the United States (Massachusetts, 2014) and, with Bill Mullen, the co-editor of The U.S. Antifascism Reader (Verso, 2020).
This symposium was generously supported by Leonard Milberg and the Achelis & Bodman Foundation.
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