Bernard Wasserstein presents a disturbing interpretation of the collapse of European Jewish civilization even before the Nazi onslaught. Wasserstein shows how the harsh realities of the age devastated the lives of communities and individuals. By 1939, the Jews faced an existential crisis that was as much the result of internal decay as of external attack.

Deals extensively with the "Jewish question" in postwar Europe. The vanquishing of Nazism in 1945 did not put an end to antisemitism: the late 1940s saw anti-Jewish outbursts in various countries, and the treatment of the Jewish DPs also contained an element of antisemitism. Although Jews are disappearing in Europe, "the Jewish question" has not gone away. It has persisted in different national and ideological contexts, both in the USSR and its satellites (Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc.) and in liberal Western Europe. The establishment of the State of Israel added new motives for the "Jewish problem", and in the 1970s-80s it exposed Jews in the diaspora to "anti-Zionist" terrorism. The political upheaval in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989-91 fueled antisemitism and caused the mass emigration of Jews from these countries. Discusses, also, the impact of the Holocaust on postwar Jewish consciousness and on attitudes toward Jews, as well as efforts of the Christian Churches to improve their stance toward the Jews.