Israel, a Personal History

“[Rosenberg] takes us from his initial sense of the ‘all-captivating promises’ of the Zionist project to a deep disillusionment with it.” —Washington Post

“A profound reckoning.” —Publishers Weekly

“Fearlessly straightforward…a singularly compelling memoir…Rosenberg is not a household name, although he may become one on the strength of this brilliant appraisal of Israel’s political path.” —Manhattan Book Review

“In a powerful account of his growing disenchantment…Rosenberg presents Zionism as a flawed vision with a tragic aspect: Far from being inevitable, the modern state of Israel, as he recounts its history, evolved in brutal policies that belied the utopian hopes on which the new nation had been founded…his retrospection illuminates the present.” —Public Seminar

“Göran Rosenberg’s book Israel is a brilliant combination of an authoritative, reliable, and critical account of the history of Zionism and the State of Israel, and a sensitive, personal, and humane account that examines with equal scrutiny the author’s own deep and complex entanglement in that history. As the son of a Holocaust survivor from Łódź who emigrated to Sweden after the war, Rosenberg was captivated by the idea of Israel and emigrated there in his youth—only to later become disillusioned with that vision and come to understand the destructive foundations upon which the state is built, and the violent future to which it is leading. This English edition of the book, published two years after October 7, 2023, and amidst the brutal genocide in Gaza, stands as a model of honest, critical, and uncompromising self-scrutiny—something we will all be obliged to undertake, in the wake of the genocide in Gaza, regarding Jewish history, Israeli history, and our own personal histories.” —Amos Goldberg, author of Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing During the Holocaust and coeditor with Bashir Bashir of The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History

Praise for A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz:

“An affecting book…It is impossible to read this enormously touching work without contemplating the present day.” —Wall Street Journal

“Beautifully wrought…powerful.” —New York Times