The Third Reich and the Jews

Born in Chemnitz, Germany, and trained as a rabbi, Josef Wulf survived the Holocaust—in the Kraków ghetto and in Auschwitz—and subsequently became a historian. After the war, Wulf remained in Europe, leading the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland from 1945 to 1947. Eventually he moved to Berlin, where he wrote extensively on the Third Reich. Although he won recognition for his research, he struggled to find a stable academic position in Germany. In 1974, faced with the ongoing power and presence of former Nazis in the German public sphere, and depressed by the death of his wife, he committed suicide.

Born in St. Petersburg, Léon Poliakov was a foundational scholar in the study of the Holocaust and among the earliest historians to examine the position of the Vatican during World War II. Poliakov spent time in Italy and Germany before settling in France. At the beginning of the war he joined the French army and, after his escape from a German prisoner-of-war camp, the French Resistance. In 1943, he helped organize the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation. Poliakov also assisted French counsel Edgar Faure at the Nuremberg trials.