Bernard Wasserstein's new book takes a hard look at the situation of Jews in Europe in the years preceding the outbreak of the Second World War. In a series of often melancholic and even elegiac snapshots, Wasserstein sets out to show what life was like before the Holocaust destroyed Europe's many and varied Jewish communities.

To acknowledge that antisemitism was in keeping with Edith Wharton's generation (this year sees the 150th anniversary of her birth) is not to dismiss or excuse it. There have always been others who have managed not to hold such views however prevalent among their peers. She was a writer whose brilliance lay in her forensic analysis and interpretation of her own, New York, haut society.

The Hide-and-Seek Children

In the chaotic aftermath of the Second World War, the late Rabbi Dr Solomon Schonfeld, the marvellous hero of Barbara Barnett's story of post-Shoah redemption, trawled Slovakia for young survivors: orphans, slave labourers and those hidden away by righteous gentiles.

The dynamic Schonfeld had already saved thousands of children before and during the war, origina

Towards the beginning of this memoir, Heda Kovaly writes that "if every beginning is hard, the beginning of hardship is the hardest." She was referring to the end of her comfortable life with prosperous parents and the beginning of a train journey deporting Czechoslovakian Jews to the freezing hell of the Lodz ghetto in 1941.
After surviving Lodz and several other incarcerations, including in Aus

With Occupy protesters and tent cities having spread around the world in recent times, it is an interesting moment to consider the efforts of a prior generation of dreamers: the anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
From New York to Vienna, groups of angry, radical and often impoverished intellectuals met in cafés and salons to discuss how to throw off the chains of capitalism a

Often outspoken Liberal rabbi emeritus David Goldberg's This Is Not The Way is a searing critique of Israel's slide from democratic values, and a lament about how the state has come to dominate the Jewish agenda worldwide.

Yasmine is the final part of a trilogy by Eli Amir - a social activist, political adviser and prize-winning author - about Jewish-Iraqi experience in Israel. The first, The Dove Flyer was described by Amir in a JC interview as "a book of dreams" in which "the dreams of all the main characters are broken as they go into exile".

Readers familiar with the Middle East's chaotic politics will know Hillel Halkin as the author of four influential books and numerous commentaries on Israel and the region. Many will affirm that he is also one of the foremost translators into English of some of the best works of Hebrew and Yiddish literatures. Melisande! What Are Dreams? is his first novel.

Stefan Zweig, in recent years, has not so much reprised an earlier reputation in this country as achieved one hitherto denied him beyond his native Austria.

This cannot be merely a testament either to the pioneering Modernism of this uniquely voiced author or to the increased sophistication of a new generation of Anglophone readers.