There were various different keys in which European history had tended to be written. One is the lyrical key, the idea that somehow, in Bretton-Woods in 1945, a bunch of well-intentioned men got together and said, "This can't go on; let's build a European Union." And it just wasn't like that.

Although the United States lost a quarter of a million men and women, civilians and soldiers, in World War II, that's considerably less than the Russians lost in soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad alone. It's important to convey to countries and to people and to generations who have no experience of the 20th century as it was lived in Europe just how catastrophic it was.

The East European small countries have a sense of betrayal, of having been forgotten by Western leaders.

Today, neither Left nor Right can find their footing.

Reality is a powerful solvent.

Judaism for me is a sensibility of collective self-questioning and uncomfortable truth-telling. I feel a debt of responsibility to this past. It is why I am Jewish.

We are not merely historians but also and always citizens.