Focuses on the efforts by the Jews of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands to reconstruct their lives after World War II. These efforts have largely been ignored, perhaps because the emphasis on assisting survivors in displaced persons camps and on developing Israel as the center of Jewish life after the Holocaust diverted attention from the struggle by Jews in Western Europe to recover their voice and sense of purpose. The book sets the record straight, presenting the challenges that the Jews in the three communities faced, both in the national context and in the world Jewish arena, and examining how they dealt with them.