(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)June 24, 2019

MAHWAH, N.J. – On March 7, Dr. Paul Hanebrink, associate professor of history and Jewish studies at Rutgers University, explored the subject matter of his recently published book, A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism (Harvard University Press, 2018). The program was presented under the auspices of the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

For much of the twentieth century, Europe was haunted by the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism, that Communism was a Jewish plot to destroy the nations of Europe. Although a contrived paranoid fantasy that took hold during the Russian Revolution, it spread across Europe, becoming a potent political weapon of fascists, Nazis, conservative Christians and other Europeans terrified by Communism. Under the Third Reich, the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism underpinned the Holocaust. Hanebrink argued that the Cold War saw a continuation of the myth that persists on both sides of the Atlantic until today.

Dr. Hanebrink has been at Rutgers since 2001. He is the author of In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, 1890–1944, published by Cornell University Press in 2006. He received a Ph. D. in History from the University of Chicago in 2000.

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