Daniel Cohen
Senior Fellow (09/2018–12/2018)

‘Philosemitism’ in Post-Holocaust Europe, 1945 to the Present

European antisemitism did not disappear after the Holocaust: Yet, starting in 1945, various forms of philosophical, theological, political, and cultural ‘philosemitism’ entered mainstream public discourse in Western Europe and in the European Union since its inception. My book is a critical history of the main ‘philosemitic’ tropes through which Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness were positively imagined in the wake of the catastrophe: humanism and antifascism in the late 1940s; philo-Zionism in the 1950s; generational rebellion in the 1960s; trauma and human rights in the 1970s; the rediscovery of ‘Central Europe’ in the 1980s; the resurrection of the dead but ‘cosmopolitan’ Jew in the European Union’s imaginary; and, more disturbingly, the more recent use of ‘philosemitism’ in the name of Judeo-Christian Europe under threat.

G. Daniel Cohen is Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He specialises in the history of refugees and forced displacement in twentieth-century Europe. He is currently writing a critical history of ‘philosemitism’ in Western Europe since 1945 and in the European Union since its inception.