Part I, "The Final Solution", describes the Holocaust as a Nazi German undertaking aiming to "solve the Jewish question" by systematic mass murder of the Jews. Dwells on the personality of Hitler and on the formation of his antisemitic worldview; argues that Hitler contemplated a mass annihilation of Jews already in the early 1920s, when he joined the Nazi Party and when he became its leader. Surveys the transformation of antisemitic ideology in Germany in the 19th-early 20th centuries. Describes the evolution of the Nazi anti-Jewish policies - from the anti-Jewish legislation to the death camps. Part II, "The Holocaust", portrays it from the viewpoint of its victims, the Jews. Dwells on the reactions of German Jews to the escalation of anti-Jewish policies in the Reich in 1933-38. Describes the ghetto system in wartime Poland and Lithuania, dwells on the functioning of the Nazi-installed Jewish councils ("the official community"), of the traditional Jewish self-organization in the ghettos ("the alternative community"), and on the Jewish anti-Nazi underground ("the countercommunity"). Discusses the reactions of all these communities to the deportations of Jews from the ghettos to the killing centers. Deals with the Jewish resistance - uprisings in the ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, Białystok, and some smaller ghettos. Appendix A presents data on the Holocaust from country to country.

Analyzes the manner in which ideological symbol systems constitute an advance beyond such previous symbol systems as religion and myth

A study of the 12th-century evolution of innovative anti-Jewish stereotypes and their impact on subsequent Western thought. The 12th century was a period of significant change and dislocation in the West; it witnessed the interaction of new societal circumstances and a prior ideational legacy, similar to events in the 19th-20th centuries. This interaction produced an innovative view of Jews which was fated to influence anti-Jewish perceptions up to the present. In the period of societal change, persecutory patterns emerged, directed at diverse societal outgroups, among them the Jews. The 12th-century stereotypes were permanently absorbed into the historic legacy of Christian anti-Jewish thinking. These stereotypes were based on a perception of Jewish hatred of Christianity and Christians, and that Jews commit acts of anti-Christian violence generated by this purported hatred (e.g. ritual murder, abuse of Christian symbols, moneylending abuses). The most pernicious anti-Jewish imagery involves stereotypes alleging mortal threats posed by Jews. States that every new stage in the evolution of anti-Jewish thinking is marked by dialectical interplay between a prior legacy of negative stereotypes and the realities of a new social context.