MOBILIZATION FOR MURDER: DEADLY ANTISEMITIC MYTHS FROM THE HOLOCAUST TO THE PRESENT
TAMI PETERSON
A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies for the Doctor of Philosophy in Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Gratz College
2026
DEDICATION
To the children
Rhys Montalvo Traquino, Wren Montalvo Traquino, Pearl Rauchwerk, Ian Maxwell Fret,
Mira Belani Barker and Samara Eichler, this work is for you
May you build a better future together and never give up hope
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thanks the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary
Antisemitism, Professor David Hirsh at Goldsmiths, University of London for constant
discussion, encouragement and support. I am grateful to the NYU Center for the Study of
Antisemitism and Professor Avinoam Patt for his insight into this project, and especially his
recommendation to use the Yizkor books as an additional source of archival material.
My thanks also go to my fellow NYU CSA inaugural fellow cohort members Irit
Bloch, Aleksandra Gliszczynska-Grabias, Marcia Kupfer, and Chrisopher Probst as well as
Liora Sabra and William Pimlott, for hours of discussion and collegial input. I am grateful to
Dr. Linda Maizels at the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism for valuable discussion,
insight and for leading the way.
I would like to thank the educators at Gratz College who are leaders in Holocaust
Studies, including Dr. Mehnaz Afridi, Dr. Carson Phillips and Dr. Ruth Sandberg, for
providing education and vital perspectives. I owe particular gratitude to my advisor and
Director of the Gratz Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights, Dr. Ayal Feinberg, for his unwavering belief in my work, constant support and encouragement and his empirical
insight.
I am grateful to my fellow students, especially Liz Berger, the original Cohort V of
the Holocaust and Genocide Studies program, and the original Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism editorial crew: Ella Nayor, Jennifer Wilson, Bobbi Bittker and Bob Verissimo. I
thank Jeffrey Kopstein (UC Irvine) and Jason Wittenberg (UC Berkeley) for their kind use of
the original datasets published in Intimate Violence. I am also grateful to Dr. Joanna Michlic,
Anna Zawadka, Helena Datner, Gunther Jikeli, Philip Spencer and David Seymour for feedback along the journey from this project's earliest conception to its present form.
I acknowledge Emmanuel Ringelblum and his team at the Oneg Shabbat Archives for
recording and preserving vital information in the most horrific circumstances - material that
continues, decades later, to help us understand the Holocaust. I am deeply grateful to the
dedicated volunteers who recorded and translated survivor testimony in the Yizkor books
over many years, and to Father Desbois and his team at Yahad-In Unum, whose interviews
with child witnesses to atrocities provided valuable insight for this work.
The six million - but especially those hundreds of nameless individuals whose violent
deaths I encountered through testimony and archival records - deserve special
acknowledgement. You deserved to live and be remembered for everything you could have been, not for how you suffered and died. History can never return what should have been, but
in your name we continue to try and create a better world from the ashes.
Given the weight of the material I was studying, many counter weights were needed.
These were provided first and foremost by my loving and devoted wife, Shira Eichler, RN,
without whose support this work would not have been possible. I thank my in-laws, the
Eichlers, for many years of discussion, Shabbat dinners, family warmth and reminders of
Jewish joy - Yaffa, Meir, Eli, Shay, Ari and my new baby niece Samara.
My beloved cats, Kitty, Stachie and Dory (RIP), were constant companions during the
hours of solitary work, providing humor and important reality checks. I am deeply grateful to my friends who have been there for me for decades, including Lorna Montalvo, Dan
Rauchwerk, Nicole Dennet and Gina Fret whose love and devotion to their own children and
our shared future, reminded me that this work was important and worth doing. I also thank
the old Salt Lake City YS crew Jason Weaver, Joellyn Manville and Samantha.
I am grateful to my friend Jeremy Barker for being a political sounding board and art
museum companion, reminding me to always look for …
Submitted!!! My defense is two weeks from today! #phdlife #dissertation #doingthework