Description:
From the Jewish communities in turn-of-the-century Europe, the Middle East, and Asia to the Zionist settling of Palestine and the Eastern European immigration to America, from the persecutions that led to the Holocaust to the renewal of Jewish communities throughout the world, The Jews in the Twentieth Century affords its reader a panoramic view. Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill and a noted Holocaust expert, provides straightforward, chronologically organized essays about each phase of Jewish history. The photographs, however, are the real reason to spend time with this book. More than 400 images, many of them never before published, convey the breadth and depth of Jewish experience in the last century, from abject suffering to exultant singing to everyday living. After the harrowing Holocaust images of World War II, a chapter titled "Rehabilitation, Statehood and Renewal" offers an image of startling normality. A young man seated is at a desk in front of a microscope, a smile just beginning to cross his face. Through a window behind him a tree is visible, its leaves reflecting the sun. The caption reads, "Jack Brauns, a survivor of the ghetto and the concentration camps, left Austria for Italy, determined to become a surgeon." One can't help be amazed, relieved, and hopeful. --Michael Joseph Gross
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