Edy Cohen (Israel), research fellow, Bar-Ilan University, “Nazis and Axis Propaganda in Mandatory Palestine and the Arab World, 1933-1945”.

Edy Cohen earned his PhD in Middle Eastern History at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. He has been a Research Fellow at the Bar-Ilan University Center for International Communication since January, 2014, and a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Bar-Ilan University’s Menachem Begin Center for the Study of Resistance Movements since October, 2013, where his focus is Nazi and Axis propaganda in mandatory Palestine and the Arab World between 1933 and 1945. From October, 2013 to January, 2014, Dr. Cohen also held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem.

During his tenure at the Mémorial de la Shoah, Dr. Cohen will be tapping military-command archives that document the collaboration between the Nazis and the Petain government, the Archives de Préfecture de Police file on the interrogation of Mufti Amin al-Husseini (a renowned Nazi-sponsored cleric and propagandist who was arrested in France in 1945), the archives of the Nuremberg trials, and the archives of the General Commission on Jewish Affairs.

From materials in these Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation archives, Dr. Cohen will study Nazi involvement in the crafting and implementation of anti-Jewish measures adopted in Arab countries, including Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt, and Nazi-era anti-Jewish propaganda disseminated in those countries, which Dr. Cohen hopes to amplify through, i.a. letters, photos, testimonies, and reports from Jewish individuals and institutions of the period.

While in France, Dr. Cohen will also take the opportunity to visit the Archives Diplomatiques in Nantes, where he will study correspondence exchanged among the French Embassies in Arab countries that played a significant role in distributing Nazi propaganda. Other collections that Dr. Cohen shall exploit, during his EHRI Fellowship, are the Archives Nationales in Paris, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, L’Institut du Monde Arabe, and the Archives du Ministère des Affaires étrangères at the Courneuve.

Edy Cohen may be contacted at edycohen@walla.com.