Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945 - Hardcover

The Jews are disappearing in Europe. In 1939 there were 10 million. After Hitler there were four million, and today there are under two million. On current projections the Jews will become virtually extinct as a significant element in European society over the course of the 21st century. This book examines why this is happening. The text assesses the reasons and puts them in the larger context of contemporary European history. It relates demographic issues to the stubborn recurrence of the Jewish problem, in different forms, in the post-war period - paricularly in central and eastern Europe. It shows how this is connected with other issues, such as the memory of Nazi genocide, the failures of communism. the impact of Israel and the effort to overcome Christian antisemitism. The book argues that survival for European Jews will ultimately depend on choices made by Jews themselves, who boast an alarmingly imbalanced death to birth ratio.