The forgotten victims of Nazi genocide

Memory of the Holocaust is fading in US culture. It has now been nearly 80 years since the end of World War II. Teaching about the Holocaust to today’s 20-year-olds is equivalent to teaching about World War I in 1998. It was so long ago. As someone who has been teaching about the Nazi genocide against the Jews since 1990, I can feel the difference as I engage students today.

Moreover, memory of the Holocaust has become politicized, deeply entangled with attitudes toward the modern state of Israel and its policies. After the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, which took 1,200 lives, news services declared it to be the worst loss of life for Jews in a single day since the Holocaust. That story soon faded out, however. It was replaced by the daily coverage of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which as of the time of this writing is estimated to have taken more than 39,000 lives. If anything, it is even more difficult to address the Holocaust today than it was before October 2023.

Historian Ari Joskowicz finished writing Rain of Ash before these recent events. One wonders how many general readers will now be interested in this exhaustive scholarly exploration of the Nazi genocidal campaigns against both the Jewish people and the Roma during World War II. But as one who believes it is essential to keep the memory of Nazi crimes alive, I am deeply grateful for the contribution that this fine young historian makes in this groundbreaking book.