Rappaport, born and educated in Vienna, was a survivor of the infamous concentration camp, Buchenwald. He died in 1974, the year before this profoundly personal work was published.

In the book, he speaks of anti-Judaism as both a particularly virulent form of individual hatred and as a social disease which demands a collective mobilization of all societal agencies to combat it. This statement indicates what the content of the book confirms: it is not clear what audience the author is addressing. His psychoanalytic colleagues may be the wrong group to exhort in order to mobilize all societal agencies to combat anti-Judaism. On the other hand, nonanalysts who might further such a mobilization will certainly