Synopses & Reviews
Jerusalem, which means "city of peace," is one of the most bitterly contested territories on earth. Claimed by two peoples and sacred to three faiths, for the last three decades the city has been associated with violent struggle and civil unrest. As the peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis reach their conclusion, the final, and most difficult issue is the status of Jerusalem. How and to what extent will these two nations share this city? How will Christians, Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem and around the world redefine their relationship to Jerusalem when the dust settles on the final agreement? Will the Israelis and Palestinians even be able to reach an agreement at all?
Menachem Klein, one of the leading experts on the history and politics of Jerusalem, cuts through the rhetoric on all sides to explain the actual policies of the Israelis and Palestinians toward the city. He describes the "facts on the ground" that make their competing claims so fraught with tension and difficult to reconcile. He shows how Palestinian national institutions have operated clandestinely since the Israelis occupied the eastern half of the city, and how the Israelis have tried to suppress them. Ultimately, he points the way toward a compromise solution but insists that the struggle for power and cultural recognition will likely continue to be a permanent feature of life in this complicated, multi-cultural city.
Review
"Shocks by its very frankness. . . . Absorbing and excellently translated, it is a valuable contribution to Holocaust scholarship."
"A most valuable addition to our knowledge of a most painful chapter in the histories of both Hungary and the Jewish people."
"A valuable contribution . . . Its publication will fill a long-felt need."
"Demonstrates the crucial nexus between the long held antipathy of the Catholic and Protestant churches in Hungary toward Hungarian Jewry and the deportation of more than 500,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in 1944."
"Based on rich documentation, it contains within it a great deal of information unknown to scholars to date. . . . A real contribution to our understanding of anti-Semitism in Hungary."
Review
"A book of considerable weight and an important contribution to the growing genre of political studies in Jerusalem."- Michael Dumper,Journal of Palestine Studies
Review
"Klein's excellent survey of these realities and dynamics will remain an important brief for decision-makers in the future." -The Journal of Israeli History,
Review
"A valuable contribution . . . Its publication will fill a long-felt need."-Nathaniel Katzburg,Professor Emeritus in Jewish History, Bar-Ilan University
Review
"Demonstrates the crucial nexus between the long held antipathy of the Catholic and Protestant churches in Hungary toward Hungarian Jewry and the deportation of more than 500,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in 1944."-Religious Studies Review,
Review
"Based on rich documentation, it contains within it a great deal of information unknown to scholars to date. . . . A real contribution to our understanding of anti-Semitism in Hungary."-Yisrael Gutman,Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem
Synopsis
The complicity of the Hungarian Christian church in the mass extermination of Hungarian Jews by the Nazis is a largely forgotten episode in the history of the Holocaust. Using previously unknown correspondence and other primary source materials, Moshe Y. Herczl recreates the church's actions and its disposition toward Hungarian Jewry. Herczl provides a scathing indictment of the church's lack of compassion towardand even active persecution ofHungary's Jews during World War II.
About the Author
Moshe Y. Herczl was born in Hungary in 1924. He studied in Yeshiva until the German invasion in 1944, when he was imprisoned in a Nazi labor camp. After his release, Herczl joined the partisans and in 1948 emigrated to Palestine, where he fought for Israel's independence. Author of several books, a former Deputy Director of the Education Department of Netanya Municipality in Israel and a former Director of the Cape Board of Jewish Education in Cape Town, Moshe Herczl died in Jerusalem in 1990.