Editor's Introduction

Editor's Introduction Catherine Chatterley Over the past several years, we have lost two of the most prominent figures in the study of the Holocaust and antisemitism: Robert Wistrich passed away on May 19, 2015, and Elie Wiesel left us on July 2, 2016. Robert's knowledge of European and Jewish history was encyclopedic and his facility with languages gave him a unique authority on the problem of antisemitism in a vast number of cultural and national contexts. Over the course of his 45-year career, he wrote and edited over 29 books on subjects related to antisemitism, the Holocaust, Zionism, and Jewish history. Robert knew the subject of antisemitism in ways that were personal as well. He was born one month before the end of WWII in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, where his parents had fled from Poland. The work we produce on this subject today rests on the foundation created, in part, by the scholarship Robert published over almost five decades. Readers will see future articles in Antisemitism Studies that begin the process of appreciating and appraising the massive contribution he made to our field of study. Elie Wiesel was a surviving remnant of the European-Jewish world destroyed by Nazism during World War II. He became the iconic Holocaust survivor for millions of people around the world, symbolizing at once the loss and suffering of Jews, the continued survival of the Jewish people, and the desire to prevent future occurrences of genocide. His passing represents another reminder of the imminent closing of the post-Holocaust period of Western history. In this issue, Alan Rosen—who studied with Elie Wiesel and is a leading scholar of his life and work—gives us his analysis of Wiesel's postwar commitment to both understanding and resisting human hatred in general, and antisemitism in particular. In an article on the Catholic Church, Dina Porat documents the shift in official attitudes toward the Jewish people from the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) through the current papacy of Francis. This post-Holocaust reckoning on the [End Page 243] part of the Church continues today and is a positive development in the rapprochement between Christians and Jews, which she argues deserves wider exposure. Two contributions in this issue began as book reviews, which eventually morphed into substantial analyses of two significant intellectuals and their relationship to antisemitism. Richard Wolin addresses Martin Heidegger's antisemitism and the long history of textual manipulation in the publication of the philosopher's work, focusing specifically on two recent books by Peter Trawny. David Norman Smith examines what he terms significant mis-readings of Émile Durkheim in the recent work of Michele Battini and Marcel Stoetzler, which associate the sociologist with fascism. In particular, he examines the charges against Durkheim put forward by Danish philosopher, Svend Ranulf. While we acknowledge the loss of authoritative expertise, wisdom, and personal experience in Wistrich and Wiesel, we also welcome new researchers to the study of antisemitism. Jacob Daniels has written a detailed historical and economic analysis of the 1934 attacks on the Jewish community of Eastern Thrace, which illustrates how this Turkish anomaly was precipitated by specific regional developments instead of an assumed antisemitic ideology imported from Europe. As always, we include a selection of extended book reviews on the millennial phenomenon of antisemitism, which provide informed and stimulating perspectives on significant new research. We wish to thank the authors, book reviewers, and peer review readers who participated in this issue for their generous contribution to Antisemitism Studies. [End Page 244] Catherine Chatterley Founding Editor-in-Chief Copyright © 2017 Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.