MIDDLETOWN, Pa. — The Center for Holocaust and Jewish Studies at Penn State Harrisburg will welcome Jeffrey Herf to campus at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 28, in the Kulkarni Theatre, SEC Building on campus. The event is free and open to the public.
Herf, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the history department at the University of Maryland, College Park, will present a discussion on his 2022 book “Israel’s Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949.”
The book explores how a Jewish state came to be forged in the shadow of World War II and the Holocaust and the onset of the Cold War. Herf explores the role of the United States, the Arab States, the Palestine Arabs, the Zionists, and key European governments from Britain and France to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland. His findings reveal a spectrum of support and opposition that stood in sharp contrast to the political coordinates that emerged during the Cold War, shedding new light on how and why the state of Israel was established in 1948 and challenging conventional associations of left and right, imperialism and anti-imperialism, and racism and anti-racism.
From 2000-22, Herf taught modern European history with a focus on Germany. His published works include “Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich,” “Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys,” “The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust,” “Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World,” and “Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967-1989.” His essay collection, “Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left, and Islamist,” is forthcoming.
For additional information, contact Neil Leifert at 717-580-2954 or chjs@psu.edu.