Foreword / William J. vanden Heuvel, Robin Vrba. - Introduction / Randolph L. Braham, William J. vanden Heuvel. - Hungary and the Jewish question / Istvań Deák. - Hungary : the controversial chapter of the Holocaust / Randolph L. Braham. - America and the Holocaust in Hungary / Richard Breitman. - The Auschwitz Reports : who got them and when? / Zoltán Tibori Szabó. - When the veil was rent in Twain : Auschwitz, the Auschwitz Protocols, and the Shoah testimony of Rudolf Vrba / Robert Jan Van Pelt. - Rudolph Vrba and the Auschwitz Reports : conflicting historical interpretations / Ruth Linn. - The Kasztner affair : a reappraisal / Eli Reichenthal. - Confronting the Holocaust : an eyewitness account / George Klein. - Hungarian Holocaust : after 50 years / Donald Blinken.

Berend's memoir offers an interesting case study, a subjective addition to the "objective" historical works on Central and Eastern European state socialism. It describes the hard choices of intellectuals in a dictatorial state: 1. remain in isolation, concentrate on scholarly works, and exclude politics in your personal life; 2. be in opposition, criticize and unveil the regime, accept discrimination and exclusion; 3. remain within the establishment and work for reforming the country using legal possibilities to criticize the regime and to achieve changes from within. Ivan T. Berend, is Distinguished Professor at the University of California Los Angeles, Director of the European Studies Program. He was one of the masterminds of regime change in Hungary. He made a career in Hungary as a university professor, Rector of the University of Economics (1973-79), and President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1985-90). He was President of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (1995-2000), and Vice-President of the International Economic History Association (1986-1994). His research interests are the complex economic, social, ideological, and cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th-20th century; economic modernization; problems of European backwardness; transition from state socialism to capitalism. He published 26 books and more than 120 studies.--Publisher's description