Criminal Lies

In his book, The Crime of My Very Existence, Michael Berkowitz investigates the myths and realities of “Jewish criminality”. Philip Kerr has given vivid depictions of German society in his dazzling Berlin Noir Trilogy. Together they discuss how these myths were used to feed antisemitism.

Michael Berkowitz is Professor of Modern Jewish History in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London. He is the author of The Jewish Self-Image: American and British Perspectives, 1881–1939; Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 1914–1933; and Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War; and he has coedited, most recently, Fighting Back? Jewish and Black Boxers in Britain.

Philip Kerr published his first book, March Violets in 1989, and has written for a number of newspapers. Most recently he was the film critic of the New Statesman. He is the creator of the disillusioned former cop turned private investigator Bernie Gunther in Nazi and post-war Germany. He is the author of more than twenty books and novels including a series of novels for children.

Dr Joanna Newman is strategic partnerships manager at the British Library. She is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Southampton, Honorary Secretary of Jewish Historical Society of England, was executive director of the London Jewish Cultural Centre and is joint editor with Toby Haggith of Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television Since 1933.

Sponsored by the Shoresh Charitable Trust

In association with Jewish Renaissance