Interview: Bernard Wasserstein and the Nazi genocide

As 1930s Europe moved towards the catastrophe of the Second World War, much of the greater part of the continent —  for Jews — was being turned into a giant concentration camp. Bernard Wasserstein’s On the Eve, The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War, captures the sorrows and glories of European Jewry in the decades leading up the Nazi genocide. From the shtetls of Lithuania, to the salons of Vienna, Jewish culture was already on the road to extinction. Wasserstein’s book also proves that contrary to received wisdom, there was a growing awareness that Jews were approaching a cataclysmic extinction.

Bernard Wasserstein was born in London and has taught at Oxford, Sheffield, Jerusalem, Brandeis, and Glasgow Universities. He is now Ulrich and Harriet Meyer Professor of Modern European Jewish History at the University of Chicago.

He spoke to the Spectator about the role the Catholic Church played in spreading anti-Semitism throughout Europe, why Zionism did not offer a credible solution to the Jewish people in their moment of crises, and how the Holocaust has affected the European consciousness.