The Swastika's Darkening Shadow

In the years leading up to the Second World War, the Jews of Europe faced unprecedented fear and anguish as the noose of anti-Semitism gradually tightened around them. The convulsive spasm of murderous violence that would overtake them, later called the Holocaust, has been impressively examined by historians in the past several decades, as has the steady persecution of the pre-war Jewish community under the Third Reich. Yet the spread of Jew-hatred across the Continent - and the murky but undeniably alarming picture that journalism and first-hand accounts brought to other nations - has thus far eluded serious, comprehensive inspection. Drawing on newspapers, magazines, diaries, diplomatic correspondence, organizational reports, and a wide variety of other sources, this history shines a lucid spotlight on the years between Adolf Hitler's rise to become Chancellor of Germany and his unleashing of the Second World War. It gives a striking portrait of the ways in which imperiled European Jews navigated their world as darkness closed about, even as individuals and organizations tried fervently to command the world's attention and mobilize other powers to action.