This lecture investigates a rarely considered yet critical dimension of anti-Semitism that was instrumental in the conception and perpetration of the Holocaust: the association of Jews with criminality. Drawing from a rich body of documentary evidence, including memoirs and little-studied photographs, the myths and realities pertinent to the discourse on "Jewish criminality" will be traced from the eighteenth century through the Weimar Republic, into the complex Nazi assault on the Jews, and extending into postwar Europe.

Focusing on the visual dimensions of association of Jews with criminality, specific themes to be addressed include the history of Jews and crime in the early modern period and nineteenth century, the construction of "Jewish Criminality" in Nazi Germany, the self-fulfilling prophecy of the ghettos and concentration camps as "prisons," and lingering stereotypes applied to Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) in postwar Europe.
Michael Berkowitz is a Professor in the Department of Hebrew & Judaic Studies at the University College London. His academic interests include, among others, modern Jewish identity formation and political self-representations, the politics of religion in Mandate Palestine, and perceptions of social deviance among Jewry from early modern times to the present. His most recent book, The Crime of My Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality, was published in September 2007 by the University of California Press. 
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