War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

Doris Bergen (1960-present day) is the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto. Throughout her career in academia, Bergen has specialized in Holocaust studies. Her key areas of study include conflict, violence, and genocide; Europe; gender, sex, and sexualities; and religion and society. Along with War and Genocide, Bergen has published Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (1996) and The Holocaust: A New History (2009), among other works. Bergen was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2018 and is also a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Bergen’s parents were Ukrainian gentiles who fled Europe in the 1920s; however, other members of her family remained and witnessed the Holocaust firsthand. Bergen was raised Mennonite and cites her personal connection to the church as inspiration for her scholarship.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was the dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death by suicide in 1945. He orchestrated the genocide of roughly 6 million European Jews, as well as Roma people, Slavs, the disabled, queer people, and communists, among others. Though historians disagree on Hitler’s leadership qualities—whether he was a weak dictator, “a pawn swept along by forces outside of his control” (30), or a cunning and charismatic mastermind—he is universally regarded as the 20th-century posterchild for