The Scourge of the Swastika

In his review for the ABA Journal, U.S. Circuit Judge John J. Parker wrote that Russell "rendered a distinct public service in giving us a brief history of these war crimes in a form that the average man can read and understand."^[7]

Drew Middleton of The New York Times called it a "difficult" book for readers.^[8]

The book has been cited as an early influence by novelist Howard Jacobson; The Scourge of the Swastika appears in Jacobson's novels The Mighty Walzer (1999) and Kalooki Nights (2006).^[9][10] It has also been cited by Hungarian-Canadian physician Gabor Maté, whose grandparents were killed in Auschwitz, as the "book that changed his life."^[11] Activist Tony Greenstein said it was the first book he ever read and that it influenced him to consider "how hateful human beings could be to other human beings."^[12]

Filmmaker Mark Forstater authored I Survived a Secret Nazi Extermination Camp, in which he reflects on his extended family who died in the Majdanek concentration camp and Belzec extermination camp. Forstater reveals his first sight of a naked woman to be in a picture of Belzec inmates running to their deaths featured in The Scourge of the Swastika.^[13]