by Robert S. Wistrich

About the author: Robert S. Wistrich teaches modern European history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Wistrich is the author of several books, including Hitler's Apocalypse and Anti-Semitism: The Longest Hatred.

It is hardly surprising that in the years since the fall of Communism, there has been a resurgence of the old demons of nationalism and anti-Semitism on the European continent, and particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. In this part of the world, after all, problems of national identity have been acute ever since the abortive revolutions of 1848. The experience of Communist rule for four decades after World War II merely froze rather than resolved these underlying conflicts and tensions, including the anti-Semitism which between the two world wars was an integral expression of the struggle for Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, or Slovak national identity. Once that iron grip...