What Ifs of Jewish History: From Abraham to Zionism edited by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld (Cambridge University Press 2016) pp. 412 Noel Coward wrote Peace in Our Time, a play which imagined defeat in the Battle of Britain and a Nazi occupation of the UK, in 1946. Writers from Philip Roth (The Plot Against America) … Read more
Review of Revolutionary Yiddishland By Alain Brossart and Sylvia Klingberg Verso, £16.99 Not all Jews who emigrated to Israel in the last century were Zionists. Some Trotskyists, Bundists and loyal Communists went to Israel as a refuge from the Nazi inferno and Stalin’s gulag. Scarred by such murderous regimes, these survivors of Red Yiddishland represented the … Read more
Review of Paul Bogdanor’s Kasztner’s Crime (Transaction 2016) pp. 323 Paul Bogdanor has penned a well-researched book on the contentious Kasztner affair – a controversy that commenced in wartime Hungary and has continued until the present day. In the summer of 1944, a minor Jewish figure, Rudolf Kasztner, negotiated with Adolf Eichmann in the … Read more
Review of Avi Shilon’s Ben-Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness (Rowman and Littlefield 2016) pp.245 This latest work from Avi Shilon describes in detail Ben-Gurion’s last decade – from stepping down as prime minister in June 1963 until his death in December 1973. They were not glorious years and were peppered by … Read more
Review of Where the Jews Aren’t by Masha Gessen (Schoken 2016) pp.171. When should the Jews leave and when should they stay put? This is the general question which the gay, Jewish, American-Russian writer Masha Gessen asks about her own life. She was beaten in primary school, ostracized at secondary school and barred from university in the USSR because of her Jewishness. Her … Read more
Jeffrey Herf, Undeclared Wars With Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left 1967–1989 (Cambridge 2016) After 1945, Communist East Germany and the far Left in West Germany felt that they had no moral responsibility towards Israel. In their eyes it was just another outpost of imperialism that had placed the yoke of colonialism around the necks of Palestinian Arabs. Prof. Jeffrey Herf’s … Read more
The Last Days of Stalin Joshua Rubenstein Yale University Press, £25 When Stalin died on Purim, in 1953, beggars in Jerusalem rattled their tin cans and cried “Haman is dead!” In the USSR, there were public tears and private joy. Huge, inconsolable crowds appeared in the streets and many participants were crushed underfoot in the … Read more
Socialism of Fools: Capitalism and Modern Anti-Semitism (Columbia University Press 2016) pp.321 by Michele Battini The Italian academic, Michele Battini examines the gradual transformation of the traditional Christian anti-Semitic charge of usury into modern anti-Jewish anti-capitalism. Fuelled by the economic transformation in the nineteenth century and the self-regulated market, anti-Jewish anti-capitalism emerged … Read more
The Black Door:Spies, Secret Intelligence and British Prime Ministers By Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac Collins, £30 British prime ministers have never been neutral towards the intelligence services. Intelligence historians Richard Aldrich and Rory Cormac have written an accessible book, indicating how different premiers reacted to intelligence reports – and often bypassed their own … Read more
Ingrid Carlberg’s Raoul Wallenberg is a painful book to read. The story is known. The outcome is known. But history cannot be unwritten. This well-researched, detailed account relates the saga of Wallenberg, the Swedish businessman diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews in wartime Hungary in 1944. This long book conveys every morsel of information – from the important to the trivial … Read more