New Books Network

About Robin Buller

NBN Episodes hosted by Robin:

Eastern European Studies August 25, 2020

Rescue the Surviving Souls

The Great Jewish Refugee Crisis of the 17th Century

Adam Teller

Hosted by Robin Buller
A refugee crisis of huge proportions erupted as a result of the mid-seventeenth-century wars in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Tens of thousands of Jews fled their homes, or were captured and …
European Studies August 14, 2020

Hitler’s Jewish Refugees

Hope and Anxiety in Portugal

Marion Kaplan

Hosted by Robin Buller
Marion Kaplan's riveting book, Hitler’s Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal (Yale University Press) describes the dramatic experiences of Jewish refugees as they fled Hitler’s regime and then lived …
Eastern European Studies June 8, 2020

Khurbm 1914-1922

Prelude to the Holocaust

Alexander Gendler

Hosted by Robin Buller
The murder of two-thirds of European Jews, referred to by many as the Holocaust, did not begin June 22, 1941, with the German invasion of the Soviet Union, or September …
American Studies January 16, 2020

Cities of Refuge

German Jews in London and New York, 1935-1945

Lori Gemeiner-Bihler

Hosted by Robin Buller
In the years following Hitler’s rise to power, German Jews faced increasingly restrictive antisemitic laws, and many responded by fleeing to more tolerant countries. Cities of Refuge: German Jews in …
French Studies January 9, 2020

Homes Away from Home

Jewish Belonging in 20th-Century Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg

Sarah Wobick-Segev

Hosted by Robin Buller
In pre-emancipation Europe, most Jews followed Jewish law most of the time, but by the turn of the twentieth century, a new secular Jewish identity had begun to take shape …
European Studies September 16, 2019

State, Nationalism, and the Jewish Communities of Modern Greece

Evdoxios Doxiadis

Hosted by Robin Buller
How did minorities fit into the new Greek state during the country’s transition from imperial rule to national sovereignty? How did the relationship between Greece and its Jewish minorities, in …
American Studies October 30, 2018

World War I and the Jews

Conflict and Transformation in Europe, the Middle East, and America

Marsha L. Rozenblit and Jonathan Karp, eds.

Hosted by Robin Buller
How was Jewish life affected by the First World War? How did Jews around the world understand, engage with, and influence the Great War and surrounding events? And why has …
European Studies October 25, 2018

Stealing Home

Looting, Restitution, and Reconstructing Jewish Lives in France, 1942-1947

Shannon Fogg

Hosted by Robin Buller
While the history of the Second World War and Jewish persecution in France has been widely studied, the return of survivors in the aftermath of deportation and genocide has not …
Literary Studies August 24, 2018

The Beginnings of Ladino Literature

Moses Almosnino and His Readers

Olga Borovaya

Hosted by Robin Buller
When did Ladino literature emerge? According to Dr. Olga Borovaya, author of The Beginnings of Ladino Literature: Moses Almosnino and his Readers (Indiana University Press, 2017), the history of Ladino …
Eastern European Studies May 24, 2018

Pioneers and Partisans

An Oral History of Nazi Genocide in Belorussia

Anika Walke

Hosted by Robin Buller
How did Soviet Jews respond to the Holocaust and the devastating transformations that accompanied persecution? How was the Holocaust experienced, survived, and remembered by Jewish youth living in Soviet territory …
European Studies May 21, 2018

Italy’s Jews from Emancipation to Fascism

Shira Klein

Hosted by Robin Buller
What was Italy’s role in the Holocaust? Why is it that Italy is known as the Axis power that was benevolent to Jews, despite a scholarly consensus that many Italians …
Film March 29, 2018

Passing Illusions

Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany

Kerry Wallach

Hosted by Robin Buller
What did it mean to be perceived as Jewish or non-Jewish in Weimar Germany? How, in an age of growing antisemitism, was Jewishness revealed, or made invisible? Kerry Wallach of …