The physical extermination of the Jews was never going to sate Hitler’s hunger for their total destruction. It was always going to be necessary to erase and distort the very memory of the Jews’ presence on earth. To that end, the Nazis’ assault on “The People of the Book” would culminate in what has been called “the greatest literary pogrom in history.”

Robert Rovinsky, formerly a professor in the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas, who has lectured widely on Holocaust-related themes, will tell the story of the assault on text.