The Swastika's Darkening Shadow Voices before the Holocaust

In the years before the Second World War, the Jews of Europe faced unprecedented fear and anguish as the noose of antisemitism gradually tightened around them. The murderous violence that would eventually overtake them, later called the Holocaust, has been impressively examined by historians, as has the steady persecution of the pre-war Jewish community under the Third Reich. Yet the spread of Jew-hatred across the Continent - and the alarming picture that journalism and first-hand accounts brought to other nations - has largely gone unexamined. Drawing on newspapers, magazines, diaries, diplomatic correspondence, organizational reports, and a wide variety of other sources, this history shines a spotlight on the years between Adolf Hitler's emergence as Chancellor of Germany and the advent of the Second World War. It recounts the ways in which European Jews navigated their world as darkness closed about, even as individuals and organizations tried fervently to command the world's attention and mobilize others to action.

Monty Noam Penkower is Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at the Machon Lander Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, Israel. His numerous publications include The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust (1983); The Emergence of Zionist Thought (1986); The Holocaust and Israel Reborn: From Catastrophe to Sovereignty (1994); and Decision on Palestine Deferred: America, Britain and Wartime Diplomacy, 1939-1945 (2002). The Jews Were Expendable received the B'nai B'rith A.D.L. Merit for Educational Distinction and, together with The Emergence of Zionist Thought, garnered the second Samuel Belkin Memorial Literary Award from Yeshiva University. Professor Penkower has been a consultant to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the A & E History Channel, the Destiny Foundation, and the National Jewish Book Council. He has received grants from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Littauer Foundation, the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the Hoover and Truman presidential libraries, the American Philosophical Society, the NEH, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

1. The Shadow of the Swastika: 1933-1935
2. The Vise Tightens: 1936-1937
3. To the Abyss: 1938-1939
Conclusion
Documents