WISTRICH, Robert S(olomon) 1945-

PERSONAL: Born April 7, 1945, in Lenger, U.S.S.R.; son of Jacob (a physician) and Sabina (a teacher of economics; maiden name, Silbiger) Wistrich; married Danielle Boccara, September 12, 1971; children: Anna, Dov, Sonia. Education: Queen's College, Cambridge, B.A. (with honors), 1966, M.A., 1970; University of London, Ph.D., 1974. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES: Home—21 Lyncroft Gardens, LondonN.W. 6, England. Office—Institute of Advanced Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.

CAREER: Institute of Contemporary History, London, England, research director and editor, 1974-80, lecturer in history, 1978-80; Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel, began as visiting professor, became professor of modern Jewish history, 1980—, senior fellow at Institute of Advanced Studies, 1981-82; writer. Visiting professor at Brandeis University and Harvard University.

MEMBER: Society of Authors, Leo Baeck Institute (member of London board of directors).

AWARDS, HONORS: German academic exchange fellowship, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, 1972; Wolfson fellowship, British Academy, 1976; scholarship, Austrian Government, 1978; fellowship, Royal Institute of Advanced Studies, Netherlands.

WRITINGS:

Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky, foreword by James Joll, Barnes & Noble (New York, NY), 1976.

The Case of Leon Trotsky (radio play), first broadcast by BBC-Radio, October 25, 1979.

Altneuland (radio play), first broadcast by Israel Radio, July 5, 1980.

Trotsky: Fate of a Revolutionary, Robson Books (London, England), 1979, Stein & Day (New York, NY), 1980.

Socialism and the Jews: The Dilemmas of Assimilation in Germany and Austria-Hungary, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (Rutherford, NJ), 1982.

Who's Who in Nazi Germany, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1982, revised edition, Routledge (New York, NY), 1995.

Hitler's Apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi Legacy, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1985.

The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1989.

Between Redemption and Perdition: Modern Anti-Semitism and Jewish Identity, Routledge (New York, NY), 1990.

Anti-Semitism: The Longest Hatred, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 1991.

Weekend in Munich: Art, Propaganda, and Terror in the Third Reich, Pavilion (London, England), 1995.

Hitler and the Holocaust, Modern Library (New York, NY), 2001.

Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger, American Jewish Committee (New York, NY), 2002.

editor

The Left against Zion: Communism, Israel, and the Middle East, Biblio Distribution (Totowa, NJ), 1979.

(Author of preface) Henry H. Weinberg, The Myth of the Jew in France, 1967-1982, Mosaid Press (Oakville, NY), 1987.

Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism in the Contemporary World, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

Austrians and Jews in the Twentieth Century: From Franz Joseph to Waldheim, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(With David Ohana) The Shaping of Israeli Identity: Myth, Memory, and Trauma, F. Cass (Portland, OR), 1995.

Terms of Survival: The Jewish World since 1945, Routledge (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Sergio Della Pergola) Fascist Anti-Semitism and the Italian Jews, Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism/Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry (Jerusalem, Israel), 1995.

(With Gideon Shimoni) Theodor Herzl: Visionary of the Jewish State, Herzl Press (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Jacob Golomb) Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism?: On the Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2002.

Contributor to periodicals, including Commentary, Encounter, Midstream, and Times Literary Supplement. Editor of Wiener Library Bulletin, 1974-82; guest editor of Journal of Contemporary History; member of editorial board of European Judaism and Jewish Quarterly.

WORK IN PROGRESS: The Limit of Fraternity: Dreyfus, the Jews, & the French Republic.

SIDELIGHTS: Robert S. Wistrich is a historian specializing in Jewish culture. He was born in the Soviet Union in 1945, but he received his college education in England, where he attended both Queen's College, Cambridge, and the University of London. He published his first book, Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky, in 1976, and followed that volume with a pair of radio plays, The Case of Leon Trotsky and Altneuland. In 1980, the same year that Altneuland played on Israel-Radio, Wistrich began teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he eventually became professor of modern Jewish history.

Wistrich's publications include various volumes on the persecution endured by Jews throughout history. In 1991, for example, he published Anti-Semitism: The Longest Hatred, which chronicles anti-Semitic bias from ancient times to the twentieth century. Donald L. Niewyk, writing in Historian, affirmed that Wistrich's book "presents a popular overview … with an emphasis on recent developments," and a Wilson Quarterly critic acknowledged Anti-Semitism as "the first single-volume overview of Jew-hatred throughout history."

Wistrich has also produced various works focusing on the Holocaust that claimed millions of Jewish lives from the 1930s to the end of World War II. Among these books is Hitler and the Holocaust, which a Publishers Weekly reviewer described as "accessible and informative" and a "balanced, nuanced discussion." Ronald J. Rychlak, in a First Things appraisal, proved less impressed, contending that Wistrich "dismisses—or overlooks—the linkage between modernity … and Nazi ideology," while Saul Friedländer, in a Times Literary Supplement analysis, declared that "Wistrich's work does not quite fulfil the expectations to which his name and the title of the book give rise." However, Frederic Krome wrote in Library Journal that Hitler and the Holocaust "presents a concise view of the major issues of the Holocaust," and he deemed the book "well written."

Wistrich is also the author of Weekend in Munich: Art, Propaganda, and Terror in the Third Reich, which examines events surrounding the National Socialist Day of German Art celebrated by Nazis on July 16, 1939. Christian Leitz wrote in the English Historical Review that Weekend in Munich concerns "the use and perversion of images, art, architecture, music and film … and the terror which went on behind this huge façade created by the Nazi propaganda apparatus."

Wistrich told CA: "My writing has revolved around the border area where modern European and Jewish history intersect, examining the cultural and national tensions, the economic conflicts, religious, political, and psychological identity crises created by modernization, secularization, emancipation, and assimilation, for Jews and non-Jews alike. I believe that the Jewish experience of the past hundred fifty years (and, indeed, throughout history) has a major universal and paradigmatic significance."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Choice, May, 2002, R. W. Lemmons, review of Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 1654.

English Historical Review, June, 1997, Christian Leitz, review of Weekend in Munich: Art, Propaganda, and Terror in the Third Reich; November, 2002, William D. Rubinstein, review of Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 1383.

First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, March, 2002, Ronald J. Rychlak, review of Hitler and the Holocaust.

Historian, summer, 1993, Donald L. Niewyk, review of Anti-Semitism: The Longest Hate, p. 773.

Library Journal, September 1, 2001, Frederic Krome, review of Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 204.

Publishers Weekly, September 3, 2001, review of Hitler and the Holocaust, p. 76.

Times Literary Supplement, March 1, 2002, Saul Friedländer, "True Believers," pp. 4-5; March 28, 2003, Jonathan Ree, "Loving the Alien," pp. 9-10.

Wilson Quarterly, spring, 1993, review of Anti-Semitism.*