The History of Anti-Semitism: Suicidal Europe 1870-1933

The history of anti-Semitism has been long and brutal. It is a story filled with the complexities of politics, economics, theology, and the countless threads of the social fabric. It is more than a procession of fact after murderous fact; it is the great mystery of "why." In THE HISTORY OF ANTI-SEMITISM, Leon Poliakov tells the "what," to seek out the "why." In this, the fourth and concluding volume of his magisterial history, SUICIDAL EUROPE, 1870-1933, Professor Poliakov shows that in the modern, racist form anti-Semitism originated in Germany but developed powerful impetus at the time of the Dreyfus Affair and in Russia at the time of the pogroms. Signs of the Continental anti-Semitism also showed themselves in England. But it was not only the Jews who suffered-their fate mirrored the decline of Europe itself into the barbarism of the Nazis.