My new position (Fall 2011): Associate Professor, Holocaust and Comparative Genocide Studies
Department of Global, International and Area Studies
The center's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/248661328484817/
Book chapter on Jewish anti-Nazi resistance
For the millions of people around the world who follow this "blog": I have a chapter on Jewish resistance in this new book from Routledge (Jan. 2011)
http://www.peterlang.net/index.cfm?vID=310557&vLang=E&vHR=1&vUR=3&vUUR=4
"John M. Cox manages to rescue for history a long-obscured dimension of resistance in wartime Berlin that of left-wing Jewish youth to a regime determined to destroy them. Using archived police interrogation records, a few memoirs of participants, and interviews with others, Cox reconstructs the milieu in which Jewish leftists managed to function in wartime Berlin. He concludes with a chapter of reflections on how Cold War exigencies produced strikingly contradictory memories of this resistance in East and West Germany."
- Karl A. Schleunes, Professor of Modern German and Holocaust History, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
"This well-written, thoroughly researched study of Jewish resistance in Germany during the Holocaust opens new vistas on this important subject and provides new insight into the whole question of Holocaust memory in post World War II East Germany. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Jewish resistance and Holocaust memory."
- David M. Crowe, Professor of History and Law, Elon University, North Carolina
Cox sets out to deal with an impressive array of questions and issues in his work, but it may reasonably be said that the groups led by Herbert Baum in the 1930s and 1940s form the central theme of Circles of Resistance....
In expounding upon often limited existing material — particularly in English-language texts — Cox’s narrative and analysis take the reader on an elucidating and sometimes wrenching journey through the hearts and minds of people who, as Cox notes, likely ‘had little future…a fact they were painfully aware of’ (p. 137). However, this work is not simply conventional historical narrative. From the outset Cox is actively working within, and against, a specific historiographical context....
The third criterion — understanding the Baum Groups as ‘history’ and their (lack of a) place within national and political narratives — is where Cox excels.... [This work] should be considered essential for all institutional research libraries. Perhaps it would be more useful for graduate rather than undergraduate courses, but could additionally be instructive and incisive to students studying historiography as a topic in its own right.
- J.R. Blackstone (Clare College, University of Cambridge), Histoire@Politique: Politique, culture, société No. 12 (Revue électronique du Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po), September-October 2010
"The Baum groups—and Cox insists that they were groups, not a single group as earlier literature has suggested—were part of a dissidence milieu that was fluid in makeup, anti-doctrinaire in outlook, and only sometimes Jewish in identity.... Although generally ambivalent about their Judaism, they nonetheless created a resistance milieu with some distinctly Jewish features. As Cox argues, their focus on reading, discussion, and other cultural activities betrayed their roots in the Weimar-era Jewish youth movements that many experienced as children or adolescents.
As Cox documents, young, leftist Germans of Jewish origin faced a difficult dilemma in Weimar and Nazi Germany. The German Communist Party (KPD), and its youth organization (KJVD), were generally indifferent to Jewish concerns, and at times even downright antisemitic. Many youthful leftist Jews found the official communist movement inflexible and doctrinaire; often restless intellects, they were eager to question orthodox communism. At the same time, most did not primarily identify themselves as Jews; as a result, existing Jewish youth and other organizations did not speak to their needs....
As Cox sensitively argues, while the Baum groups’ actions may seem futile or even damaging to the Jewish community, they achieved something crucially important. In his words, they “thwarted the Nazi ambition to dehumanize and crush its victims” and “prevented the dictatorship from its goal of corrupting its victims morally and spiritually” (p. 184). Indeed, by taking a stand, these courageous Jews died in dignity and, in so doing, effectively challenged the Nazi regime.
- Catherine Epstein, Amherst College; Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
Raul Hilberg: 1926-2007
An essay I wrote to commemorate the pioneering Holocaust scholar:
Download JOJI_John_Cox_-_Raul_Hilberg.pdf
Op-eds on civil-rights history, Islam/Islamophobia, soccer, etc.
"Islamo-fascism": A curious term, much in vogue lately, but that cannot withstand too much scrutiny; here's something I wrote about "Islamo-fascism" for our local paper: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1001-21.htm
Two more recent articles (Aug. 2010) on the "ground zero mosque" (i.e., non-mosque a few blocks from "ground zero") controversy: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/27-9
February 2011: "Racism has not disappeared"/shout-out to the Freedom Riders: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/feb/09/guest-commentary-black-history-month-reminds-us-ra/?partner=RSS
February 2010: On the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-in: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/mar/03/50-years-ago-sit-in-relit-drive-civil-rights/
Co-written with Dave Zirin during the 2006 World Cup:
http://www.thenation.com/article/using-soccer-kick-iran
http://www.thenation.com/article/hey-guys-its-just-game
http://www.counterpunch.org/zirin07082006.html
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/cox140706.html
An essay I wrote in 2009 about racial and class issues that arose during the last presidential campaign:
Download Cox Rev Wright Joe Plumber chapter
"Abu Ghraib and the U.S. Occupation of Iraq," for the Historians Against the War
Chapter on the Herbert Baum groups (Jewish/leftist resistance network)
I contributed a chapter on the Herbert Baum groups, a German-Jewish resistance operation, to this book (published in 2008), which can also be accessed on Google Books:
Chapter-length entry on German socialism & nationalism in the interwar period for the International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest (2008)
Download Germany_socialism_and_nationalism[1]
Brief essay on Diego Rivera's "Tenochtitlán" mural for Evoking Genocide: Scholars and Activists Describe the Works That Shaped Their Lives, edited by Adam Jones
