My first book Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War was published with Bloomsbury Academic in April 2017.
You can buy it through the Bloomsbury Academic website and download the book's introduction, From 'Chosen Fighters of the Jewish People' to Jewish Resistance Fighters, here.
Reviews:
- European History Quarterly 47/4, September 2017 - by Raanan Rein.
- European Review of History 25/6, February 2018 - by Jan Rybak.
- The Volunteer, 23 august 2018 - by Inbal Ofer.
- Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 36/3, Winter 2018 - by Lisa Kirschenbaum.
- Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire 4/140, 2018 - by Édouard Sill.
- Michigan War Studies Review, 26 July 2018 - by Samuël Kruizinga.
- Quests, Issues in Contemporary Jewish History 13, August 2018 - by Fraser Raeburn.
- H-War, H-Net Reviews, August 2018 - by Joe Banin.
- Arbeit – Bewegung – Geschichte Zeitschrift für historische Studien 17/3, Octobre 2018 - by Dieter Nelles.
- Times Literary Supplement, 4 January 2019 - by Colin Shindler.
- American Historical Review, April 2019 - by Xosé M. Núñez Seixas.
- International Brigade Memorial Trust Magazine, September 2019 - by Freddy Shaw.
- AJS Review 43/2, November 2019 - by Nick Underwood.
About the book:
Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War discusses the participation of volunteers of Jewish descent in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, focusing particularly on the establishment of the Naftali Botwin Company, a Jewish military unit that was created in the Polish Dombrowski Brigade.
Gerben Zaagsma analyses the symbolic meaning of the participation of Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company both during and after the civil war. He puts this participation in the broader context of Jewish involvement in the left and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in the communist movement and beyond. To this end, the book examines representations of Jewish volunteers in the Parisian Yiddish press (both communist and non-communist).
In addition, it analyses the various ways in which Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company have been commemorated after WWII, tracing how discourses about Jewish volunteers became decisively shaped by post-Holocaust debates on Jewish responses to fascism and Nazism, and discusses claims that Jewish volunteers can be seen as 'the first Jews to resist Hitler with arms'.
Reviews:
“Gerben Zaagsma's book will become the standard work on the participation of Jews in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Meticulously researched and broadly focused, the book makes important contributions to the history of the Jewish Left and the politics of commemoration in the twentieth century.” – Derek Penslar, Samuel Zacks Professor of Jewish History, University of Toronto, Canada
“Gerben Zaagsma has produced a superb study of a vital dimension of modern Jewish and European history - the engagement of a core group of Jewish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. This fascinating book provides a penetrating analysis of Jews' politicized military activity in the context of the multi-layered, long and short-term symbolic significance of their efforts. It is Jewish and transnational history at its finest, focused on Yiddish-speaking Polish Jews from Paris, confronting fascism in order to support what they believed to be a universal, humanitarian cause.” – Michael Berkowitz, Professor of Modern Jewish History, University College London, UK
Table of contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
A Note on Translations
Abbreviations
Introduction: From 'Chosen Fighters of the Jewish People' to Jewish Resistance Fighters
PART I - Jewish Volunteers in the International Brigades
1. Backgrounds and Contexts
2. The Naftali Botwin Company
PART II - Jewish Volunteers in the Parisian Yiddish Press
3. Analysing the Yiddish Press in Paris in the 1930s
4.'Chosen Fighters of the Jewish People': Jewish Volunteers in Naye Prese
5. Jewish Volunteers in Parizer Haynt and Undzer Shtime
PART III - Postwar: Becoming Jewish Volunteers
6. Jewish Volunteers and Jewish Resistance: Setting the Stage
7. Debating Jewish Volunteers: The Long 1970s
8. 50 years: Jewish Volunteers as Jewish Resistance
Epilogue
Bibliography
Notes
