In the twentieth century, the Jewish experience has been dominated by two extraordinary (and related) events: the Nazi holocaust and the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel. It is natural that they should be reflected in Jewish historiography, and especially in the large number of books, articles, and theses concerned with the impact of the Holocaust on Jewish communities around the world. In Europe, especially, where almost every national Jewish community was destroyed, historians (many of them survivors of the events they describe) have been struggling to come to terms with the way these things happened.