Right up to the Second World War, Poland and Russia were home to over 40 per cent of the world's Jews. In this abridged version of his prize-winning three-volume history, Antony Polonsky succeeds in providing a comprehensive overview that examines the realities of Jewish life, setting them in the context of the political, economic, and social circumstances of the time, while at the time avoiding both sentimentalism and the simplification of the story into one of persecution and martyrdom.
