The Enemy at His Pleasure: A Journey through the Jewish Pale of Settlement during World War I (review)

The Difference Nationalism Makes: Jews and Others in the Twentieth Century

“…By the 1930s the Zionists were a potent, if not the strongest, single political movement in Galicia, even if for many Jews this did not imply actually wanting to set off to Palestine but rather a political and national identity. 24 What appears by all accounts more than likely is that on the eve of the Second World War, which in Galicia meant the takeover of the province by the Soviet Union for the next two years, a combination of violent events and nationalizing efforts had ensured that large parts of the population identified themselves as members of one of the three main groups in the region. However, as many other contributions to this volume have shown for different European countries, both in the East and the West of the continent, this does not mean that there were no overlaps, ambiguities, or attempts to defy national divisions by way of other allegiances and ideologies.…”