A fluky book by on the of the world’s greatest Holocaust historians. Gilbert gathers dozens of newly uncovered personal histories of November 10, 1938 when more than a thousand German and Austrian synagogues were attacked and burned. The accounts of burned synagogues seem trivial compared to what we know follows. Moreover, the personal histories are all from survivors so their cumulative impact is to make it seem like escaping the Holocaust was not so hard. At first the personal stories seem randomly distributed through the text, but as the stories intermingle with the sound of country doors slamming shut to Jews trying to escape Germany and the war and extermination machines power up to full throttle this highly readable, short book with a British perspective turns terrific. August 2006.

When the handful of Poland’s original population of 3 million Jews returned from Siberia, concentration camps, or from hiding to reclaim their property and their lives they were subjected to intense anti-semitism following the war. They were denied work, health care, access to their property, and worse still, were subjected to threats, beatings, and in a handful of towns, Kielce being the most famous, murder. The book is highly documented and littered with footnotes and references making it more academic than a story. It takes some work to move through it, but the image of Poles as deeply anti-Semitic is inescapable. Gross’s other book, Neighbors, is an account of the murder of hundreds of Jews in the village of Jedwabne, Poland during World War II, without the presence of any Nazis and Fear is a continuation of Gross’s investigation into Poland’s behavior toward Jews during and after the war.. In short, Fear, is the official account of the story of our friend, Chana Factor, and our Temple Congregant, Janine Dreyfus. October 2006.