Who could have predicted that even into the 21st century, Jews would continue to feel the lethal blade of anti-Semitism, with unrelenting attacks on synagogues, rabbis, individuals, Jewish institutions and Jewish-owned property? Michael Moshe Checinski is not surprised. He has lived through the virulent anti-Semitism that produced the Lodz ghetto and the Nazi death camps. After the War, as a member of Polish Counterintelligence, Michael confronted the anti-Semitism that "cleansed" him from his native land. As a Research Fellow, he encountered the gargoyle of anti-Semitism at Harvard, and as Professor of Defense Economics, he came face-to-face with unrelenting anti-Semitism in the bastion of modern Democracy, The American-German Marshall Center. At each period in his life, Checinski believes firmly that he has finally arrived in a social Eden, only to discover that even the good people turn away and shrink from the fight against anti-Semitism. So, he begins to co! llect data -- reports, memos -- snippets of information that will corroborate what he has found out, first hand: that the tentacles of anti-Semitism cannot be cut off by just wishing them away, or ignoring them. They must be aggressively confronted and their root cause, destroyed. Checinski is on a crusade, but he is no Don Quixote. He is a proud Jew, fighting bigotry, and more often than not, pays a high price for his ideals.
