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WEDNESDAY

Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line and the multinational corporation, but that’s not why Adolf Hitler kept a portrait of the auto tycoon in his Munich office. Most people familiar with his legacy are aware that Ford hated Jews; Neil Baldwin’s Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate establishes that the magnate was no commonplace bigot. Ford used his fortune to underwrite anti-Semitic publications and books, including an English translation of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a notorious forgery. Ford officially apologized in 1927, but he never changed his mind—or his pro-Nazi sympathies. He accepted a Nazi medal barely a year before World War II began, and his company maintained illegal ties to its subsidiaries in occupied Europe during the war—transgressions that weren’t purged when the Ford Motor Co. sponsored the TV premiere of Schindler’s List. Baldwin discusses his book at 7 p.m. at the District of Columbia Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th St. NW. $6. (202) 777-3254. (Mark Jenkins)