This fierce memoir is both an elegy and an indictment. Marcel Liebman's account of his childhood in Brussels under the Nazi occupation explores the emergence of his class consciousness against a background of resistance and collaboration. He documents the internal class war that has long been hidden from history: how the Nazi persecution exploited class distinctions within the Jewish community, and how certain Jewish notables collaborated in a systematic programme of denunciation and deportation against immigrant Jews who lacked the privileges of wealth and citizenship.

In this comprehensive and dynamic Deutscher Prize winning work, Liebman rises about the dogmatism and sterility that plague most appraisals of Lenin, and persuasively makes the case that the Russian Revolutionary's political ideas have an enduring relevance for today's activists. Marcel Liebman was a historian of socialism and of communism.