The plunge attempted by Leslie Epstein in King of the Jews required not merely courage but a degree of self-confidence approaching the suicidal. Epstein has written a novel about the Holocaust, a monumental study of the leader of a Judenrat. The scene is the Ghetto of Lodz, in Nazi-occupied Poland, and the central character is based on Chaim Mordecai Rumkowski, that legendary figure who ruled the ghetto, terrorized its inhabitants into passivity and submission, and persuaded them that a policy of "co-operation"—of letting one category after another be rounded up and driven into the trains bound for the gas chambers—offered a chance of survival for the dwindling remnant.

It isn't overstating the matter to say that there is no more terrible story in the history of the world than this, and for more than thirty years the Jewish people have been trying to come to terms...