10 | December | 2008 | Cambridge Forecast Group Blog

BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS BIS REVIEW NO. 154: FINANCIAL TURMOIL

December 10, 2008 at 6:41 pm | Posted in Economics, Financial, Globalization, Research | Leave a comment

BIS Review

Bank for International Settlements

BIS Review No 154 available‏

Press, Service (Press.Service@bis.org)

Publications, Service (Publications@bis.org)

bisrev154…pdf (247.3 KB)

Wed 12/10/08

Please find BIS Review No 154 attached as an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file.

Alternatively, you can access this BIS Review on the Bank for International Settlements’ website by clicking on http://www.bis.org/review/index.htm.

What’s included?

BIS Review No 154 (10 December 2008)

Jean-Claude Trichet: Remarks on the financial turmoil

Nils Bernstein: Denmark’s economy against the background of the financial sector crisis

Ewart S Williams: Small and medium-sized enterprises in Trinidad and Tobago – challenges and priorities

Svante Öberg: Wage formation and monetary policy

Lorenzo Bini Smaghi: Restarting a market – the case of the interbank market

________________________________

please e-mail press.service@bis.org.

BIS Review

Bank for International Settlements

BIS Review No 154 available‏

Press, Service (Press.Service@bis.org)

Publications, Service (Publications@bis.org)

bisrev154…pdf (247.3 KB)

http://www.bis.org/review/index.htm

Wed 12/10/08

“SUPERCLASS: THE GLOBAL POWER ELITE AND THE WORLD THEY ARE MAKING”: DAVID ROTHKOPF BOOK

December 10, 2008 at 4:01 pm | Posted in Books, Financial, Globalization, USA | Leave a comment

Superclass: The Global Power Elite

and the World They Are Making

by David Rothkopf (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Books on world elites tend to focus on the superwealthy, but political scholar Rothkopf (Running the World) has written a serious and eminently readable evaluation of the superpowerful. Until recent decades, great-power governments provided most of the superclass, accompanied by a few heads of international movements (i.e., the pope) and entrepreneurs (Rothschilds, Rockefellers). Today, economic clout—fueled by the explosive expansion of international trade, travel and communication—rules. The nation state’s power has diminished, according to Rothkopf, shrinking politicians to minority power broker status. Leaders in international business, finance and the defense industry not only dominate the superclass, they move freely into high positions in their nations’ governments and back to private life largely beyond the notice of elected legislatures (including the U.S. Congress), which remain abysmally ignorant of affairs beyond their borders. The superelites’ disproportionate influence over national policy is often constructive, but always self-interested. Across the world, the author contends, few object to corruption and oppressive governments provided they can do business in these countries. Neither hand-wringing nor worshipful, this book delivers an unsettling account of what the immense and growing power of this superclass bodes for the future. (Mar.)

From The Washington Post

Go to www.theyrule.net. A white page appears with a deliberately shadowy image of a boardroom table and chairs. Sentences materialize: “They sit on the boards of the largest companies in America.” “Many sit on government committees.” “They make decisions that affect our lives.” Finally, “They rule.” The site allows visitors to trace the connections between individuals who serve on the boards of top corporations, universities, think thanks, foundations and other elite institutions. Created by the presumably pseudonymous Josh On, “They Rule” can be dismissed as classic conspiracy theory. Or it can be viewed, along with David Rothkopf’s Superclass, as a map of how the world really works.

In Superclass, Rothkopf, a former managing director of Kissinger Associates and an international trade official in the Clinton Administration, has identified roughly 6,000 individuals who have “the ability to regularly influence the lives of millions of people in multiple countries worldwide.” They are the “superclass” of the 21st century, spreading across borders in an ever thickening web, with a growing allegiance, Rothkopf argues, to each other rather than to any particular nation.

Rothkopf’s archetypal member of the superclass is Blackstone Group executive Stephen Schwarzman, who is not only fabulously wealthy, but also chairman of the Kennedy Center, a board member of the New York Public Library, the New York City Ballet, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the New York City Partnership. These boards, along with the over 100 businesses Blackstone has invested in, the other business councils and advisory boards he sits on, and his Yale and Harvard education, mean that Schwarzman is only one or two affiliations away from any center of power in the world. Rothkopf actually traces the “daisy chain” of Schwarzman’s connections through his board memberships — linking him to Ratan Tata, one of India’s richest men, former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo and many others. It is these links that create access that translates to influence and determines how the levers of power are pulled.

Fame alone doesn’t get you into the global power elite: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are out while Angelina Jolie and Bono are in. High office is generally enough for politicians and even their spouses, but membership in the superclass can be fleeting — Mikhail Gorbachev and Cherie Blair are now out, while Henry Kissinger and Bill Clinton are still in. Rothkopf harps on the Pareto principle of distribution, or the “80/20 rule,” whereby 20 percent of the causes of anything are responsible for 80 percent of the consequences. That means 20 percent of the money-makers make 80 percent of the money and 20 percent of the politicians make 80 percent of the important decisions. That 20 percent belongs to the superclass.

On closer inspection, however, Rothkopf has no actual methodology for determining who is in and who is out. Each chapter identifies individuals who are said to count in a field, conclusions backed up by trendspotting and anecdotes about Rothkopf’s encounters at Davos and New York dinner parties that make the reader feel vaguely voyeuristic. When Rothkopf ventures away from his core expertise in politics and finance, and into such subjects as asymmetrical warfare, mega-churches and freemasonry, the pastiche-like quality of his research becomes evident.

Still, Superclass is often thought-provoking. For one thing, it is as much about who is not part of the superclass as who is. As I read Rothkopf’s chronicles of elite gatherings — Davos, Bilderberg, the Bohemian Grove (all male), Fathers and Sons (all male) — I was repeatedly struck by the near absence of women. Fortune magazine’s annual Most Powerful Women Summit, the only elite gathering I know of that is restricted to women, didn’t even rate a mention. And indeed, when Rothkopf summarizes “how to become a member of the superclass,” his first rule is “be born a man.” Only 6 percent of the superclass is female.

Superclass is written in part as a consciousness-raising exercise for members of the superclass themselves. Rothkopf worries that “the world they are making” is deeply unequal and ultimately unstable. He hopes that the current global elite will use their power to do more than egg each other on to high-profile philanthropy. Elites in radically unequal countries such as Chile, for instance, might decide to open their cozy circles of power to allow the emergence of a genuine middle class. New York bankers might realize that they can no longer peddle loans to developing countries in good times but then pressure the U.S. Treasury and the International Monetary Fund to bail out those same governments when they suddenly default on their debts (ensuring, of course, that the bankers get paid). The agribusinesses that reap billions from domestic subsidies in developed countries might consider the longer-term value of trade rather than aid for countries at the bottom of the global food chain.

Perhaps. But it’s likely to take more than exhortation. In the words of former Navy Secretary John Lehman, “Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.” Why would the superclass want to give it up?

Each of them is one in a million. They number six thousand on a planet of six billion. They run our governments, our largest corporations, the powerhouses of international finance, the media, world religions, and, from the shadows, the world’s most dangerous criminal and terrorist organizations. They are the global superclass, and they are shaping the history of our time.

Today’s superclass has achieved unprecedented levels of wealth and power. They have globalized more rapidly than any other group. But do they have more in common with one another than with their own countrymen, as nationalist critics have argued? They control globalization more than anyone else. But has their influence fed the growing economic and social inequity that divides the world? What happens behind closed door meetings in Davos or aboard corporate jets at 41,000 feet? Conspiracy or collaboration? Deal-making or idle self-indulgence? What does the rise of Asia and Latin America mean for the conventional wisdom that shapes our destinies? Who sets the rules for a group that operates beyond national laws?

Drawn from scores of exclusive interviews and extensive original reporting, Superclass answers all of these questions and more. It draws back the curtain on a privileged society that most of us know little about, even though it profoundly affects our everyday lives. It is the first in-depth examination of the connections between the global communities of leaders who are at the helm of every major enterprise on the planet and control its greatest wealth. And it is an unprecedented examination of the trends within the superclass, which are likely to alter our politics, our institutions, and the shape of the world in which we live.

Product Details:

Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition
March 18, 2008
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0374272107
ISBN-13: 978-0374272104

Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World

They Are Making

ISLAMIC FINANCE AND THE CURRENT GLOBAL CRISIS

December 10, 2008 at 1:14 pm | Posted in Arabs, Development, Economics, Financial, Globalization, Islam, Research, World-system | Leave a comment

BACK TO BASICS ISLAMIC FINANCING

The core ethical principles of Islamic

finance have protected the industry

from the worst effects of the credit

crunch.

One segment of the financial markets has been watching the global credit crunch with interest. Islamic financing makes up a small percentage of total global financial assets, but it is a fast-growing segment of the market. Assets are expected to rise from $750 billion at the end of 2006 to more than $1 trillion by 2010. As conventional banks go back to basics, having got their fingers burnt by complex financial instruments, Islamic financing’s exponents believe their investment philosophy is more likely to resonate with banks and investors.

While conventional banks were becoming ever more highly leveraged and dabbling in financial instruments that were not transparent, Islamic financing focused on real assets, which perhaps explains why most Islamic banks have not had to utilize the financial lifelines extended to their conventional counterparts. “Islamic financial institutions are still an attractive proposition and have maintained credit quality,” says Nik Thani, executive director of Islamic finance at the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC). The general belief is that even if oil prices fall, there is still enough locally held liquidity in the Middle East to avoid the boom-and-bust cycles of old.

One of the key factors in Islamic finance’s resilience, even in the current climate, explains Abdul Rahman Mohammed Al-Baker, executive director of financial institutions supervision at the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB), is the structure of Islamic products. “They have the physical assets in place,” he says, “be they real estate or other types of assets such as commodities that have real value. With subprime instruments, investors could not understand them.”

Many believe the credit crunch will open investors’ eyes to the potential of Islamic financing. At an Islamic financing congress hosted by State Street in early October in Boston, Zeti Akhtar Aziz, governor of Malaysia’s central bank, Bank Negara Malaysia, stated that Islamic financing continued to be viable and competitive amid the increasingly uncertain global environment and that greater global participation in the development of Islamic finance, both directly and indirectly, would enhance the potential role of Islamic finance in contributing toward global financial stability.

Al-Baker says the interest in Islamic financing continues to grow, spurred on by increased attention from conventional banks that are developing greater volumes of Islamic financial products and establishing separate Islamic banking divisions. Despite some high-profile casualties from the credit crunch in the conventional insurance market, the Islamic equivalent, takaful, continues to grow at a rate of 35% to 40% per year, says Al-Baker, and markets such as Bahrain are attracting some of the big names in takaful and re-takaful, including Western firms such as Allianz and AIG.

Another advantage the Islamic financial market has over conventional markets is its relative immaturity in terms of the complexity and sophistication of Shariah-compliant financial products.

“They are trying to develop Islamic versions of Western products and should not be impacted to the same degree by the credit crunch. As an example, there remains a high degree of skepticism on the applicability of derivatives under Islamic law,” says Rod Ringrow, senior vice president and managing director of State Street’s Qatar office. Unlike conventional financial instruments, which tend to be developed in isolation, the need to gain approval from Shariah scholars means that Islamic financial products have to jump through a few more hoops before they are deemed fit for purpose and suitable for general market distribution. “Shariah boards constitute a unique form of corporate governance, where a group of people are assigned to look at products, not just in terms of their marketability but also the additional checks and balances of Islamic scholars, which are not just about the bottom line,” says Thani.

It is these checks and balances—and Islamic financing’s core principles of no interest, no speculation or uncertainty, and screening out of highly leveraged stocks—that could prove its biggest appeal. “People with a strong leaning toward social responsibility or ethical investments may find Islamic investments more attractive in this climate,” says Ringrow. Adds Thibaud de Maintenant, head of fund services for Deutsche Bank, “Islamic funds do not permit short selling, so that is an example of where Islamic financing could provide a different perspective.”

But while Islamic financing is based on old-fashioned asset-backed financing, it is starting to reflect the complexity and sophistication that have been the hallmarks of conventional financial markets—until recently. Ijlal Alvi, CEO of the Bahrain-based International Islamic Financial Market (IIFM), made up of central banks and monetary agencies from the Middle East and Asia for the promotion of Islamic capital and money markets, says for liquidity management purposes an Islamic equivalent of repurchase agreements is worth exploring.

Repurchase agreements in the context of Islamic bonds or sukuk were frowned upon by the Bahrain-based Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), which stated that sukuks containing repurchase agreements went against the risk-and-reward-sharing principle of Shariah law. “It is a matter of explaining and seeing what [an Islamic repurchase agreement] does,” says Alvi. “If it is properly explained and documented, then I think the majority of Shariah scholars will agree.”

IIFM is also in the final stages of devising a master agreement for the Islamic equivalent of derivatives. While Alvi concedes that derivatives are a “complex issue” in the context of Islamic financing, he says that so far the feedback from Shariah scholars is encouraging. “However, from a Shariah point of view we have to make sure that it is not speculative,” he adds.

While derivatives in Islamic financing are being explored for hedging and risk management purposes, some question how far the Islamic financial industry should go in terms of convergence with conventional financial markets and whether convergence is even desirable, given the current problems in conventional markets. “Islamic financing still needs to be more integrated with global financial markets if it is to achieve global growth,” Alvi asserts.

Thani says new Islamic financial products should not be a mere imitation of conventional products. “The quality of every [Islamic financial] product needs to be looked at carefully,” he says. “There were certain forms of sukuk that were frowned upon by scholars, but that was because they were copying whatever was in the conventional financial market. But in the current market sukuks are structured well, and so far the proof is in the pudding.”

Given the global and systemic nature of the credit crisis, Islamic financing has not escaped totally unscathed. In the current climate the cost of arranging and underwriting sukuk has gone up, says Thani. “It does demonstrate that Islamic financing is not immune to every form of risk, as the cost of doing business is now higher, especially for those sukuk which are attached to Libor,” he says. “If a sovereign issued a sukuk now, it would be oversubscribed, but then you would have to pay more, so definitely we are seeing a slowing in sukuk. We hope the slowdown is temporary, but it is too early to say.”

Sukuk was one of the burgeoning areas of Islamic financing, having grown to an estimated $90 billion, but in September various reports quoting market data said sukuk issuance has halved this year. Alvi of IIFM says that Japan and Indonesia delayed the launch of their sukuks because of what has been happening in the global markets. However, he says that investor appetite for sukuk is still there.

A drop-off in the primary market is also likely to slow development of a secondary market in sukuk. “We are still not seeing a broad investor base,” says Alvi, “and it is likely that we will not see the critical mass we hoped for this year. We will now have to wait until 2009.” Ringrow of State Street says that in the current climate the appetite for setting up MENA (Middle East and North Africa) investment funds may also abate and that family-owned companies may postpone their IPOs until investment conditions improve. “In a world where everything is so interconnected, I cannot see Islamic financing escaping completely,” he says.

Calls for more joined-up thinking on which financial instruments are compliant with Shariah law and the need for greater market supervision are likely to be louder in the wake of the meltdown in conventional financial markets. Islamic financial markets in different regions have developed at a different pace based on different schools of Shariah thought and jurisprudence. “Islamic financing regulators tend to work in silos, which is not beneficial,” says Thani. “There is a certain amount of cooperation between different jurisdictions, but this could be improved.”

Roger Harrold, head of domestic custody services at Deutsche Bank, says cooperation between Malaysia and Dubai is facilitating the distribution of Malaysian Islamic funds in the UAE. “If wealth creation continues,” he says, “major Islamic financial population centers such as Malaysia will not be satisfied with just investing in funds in their own country. It seems logical that we will see many more cross-border investments.”

But before that happens, standardization of Islamic financial instruments is essential, and a good example of that is IIFM’s Master Agreement for Treasury Placement (MATP), which can be used by financial institutions in any jurisdiction for over-the-counter (OTC) commodity murabaha transactions. Although commonly used in money markets, commodity murabaha were treated differently in some countries. “Now the commodity murabaha is standard and speaks the same language, but that process needs to be speeded up,” says Al-Baker of CBB.

While the pace of innovation in the Islamic financial market is unlikely to abate even in current market conditions, one lesson all markets can learn from the current crisis is the need for greater transparency and dialogue between regulators in different jurisdictions. “Systemic risk highlights the need for greater cross-border cooperation,” observes Alvi of IIFM. “In the past we have informed different jurisdictions as to what we were doing, but now we are approaching them more directly.”

“It is not just about internal supervision,” Al-Baker adds. “Cooperation and coordination with other regulators gives us the opportunity to hear what is going on in other markets, and it can lead to new ideas such as the setting up of Islamic investment trusts. My dream one day is that we will have an Islamic pension scheme.”

Anita Hawser

THE JOURNAL OF HELENE BERR: PARIS HOLOCAUST

December 10, 2008 at 11:42 am | Posted in Books, France, Germany, History, Judaica, Literary, Philosophy | Leave a comment

The Journal of Helene Berr

by Helene Berr (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

I was abruptly assailed by the feeling that I had to describe reality, writes Berr midway through this urgent firsthand account of the devastation of Paris’s Jewish community during WWII. This journal, which begins in 1942 as the record of a young woman’s intense and buzzing inner life, becomes over time a record of human suffering: How will the world be cleansed unless it is made to understand the full extent of the evil it is doing? Berr, daughter of a prosperous assimilated Jewish family, was forced to quit her studies at the Sorbonne, joined an underground network to save Jewish children, saw her father arrested and beloved friends deported. But as compelling as external trials are the thoughts and feeling of this brilliant, passionate and brave young woman. As the noose tightens around Paris’s Jews, Berr wonders if she still has the right to find momentary pleasure in reading; she questions herself for falling into instinctive, primitive hatred of Germans. Yet in one overpowering moment of rage, she rails against impassive Parisian Christians who crucify Christ every day. Berr died in Bergen-Belsen in 1944, five days before the camp’s liberation, but her vibrant voice—full of anguish, compassion, indignation and defiance—springs from these pages—as extraordinary a document of occupied France as Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française. Photos. (Nov.)

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post’s Book World

Reviewed by Michael Dirda

The Journal of Hélène Berr is a relatively late addition to that most sorrowful of genres, one that should never have come to exist: Holocaust literature. Its title subtly recalls the most famous testimony to the horror of life under Nazi domination, The Diary of Anne Frank. As it happens, these two vital and deeply appealing diarists described precisely the same period — 1942 to 1944 — but with a significant difference: While the adolescent Frank hid in her secret rooms in Amsterdam, Berr carried on with her life as a university student in occupied Paris. At least for a while. Ultimately, though, both shared the same fate: death at Bergen-Belsen in 1945. The two young women were imprisoned there at the same time. The Hélène Berr journal begins in the spring of 1942. They might have met. As she picks up a package left with a Paris concierge. France’s most distinguished poet has kindly inscribed one of his books to her: “On waking, so soft is the light and so fine this living blue, Paul Valery.” The next day Berr records that she and her friends are planning a picnic to her family’s country place at Aubergenville. In Paris itself life consists of English classes, evenings of chamber music (Bach, Schumann, Chopin), visits to bookshops, the reading of Russian novels or romantic poetry. Berr confesses that she might be in love with a young man named Gérard — until she meets a fellow student named Jean Morawiecki. Her heart is suddenly torn. Full of emotional confusion, the 20-year-old finds refuge in the study of Old English. A dozen pages of the journal go by before there is any mention of the Germans. After all, why discuss such unpleasantness? Hélène Berr belongs to a privileged family and class, her father being the eminent and valued managing director of Etablissements Kuhlmann, an important chemical company. Though Jewish, the Berrs are thoroughly French — and haut-bourgeois — in their outlook and culture. They certainly have almost nothing in common with the lower-class and sometimes now stateless émigré Jews occasionally being detained by the Germans. One could hardly imagine that such people and the elegant Berrs belonged to the same race — at least not until the edict of May 29, 1942, ordering all Jews to wear a yellow star. At first Berr hesitates, considering it “degrading,” but ultimately she changes her mind out of a brave sense of solidarity. Her pages about publicly displaying this hateful insignia are both piteous and shocking: “I was very courageous all day long. I held my head high, and I stared at other people so hard that it made them avert their eyes. But it’s difficult . . . This afternoon it all started over again. I had to fetch Vivi Lafon from her English exam at 2:00. I did not want to wear the star, but I ended up doing so, thinking my reluctance was cowardly. First of all there were two girls in avenue de La Bourdonnais who pointed at me. Then at Ecole Militaire métro station . . . the ticket inspector said: ‘Last carriage.’ . . . I suddenly felt I was no longer myself, that everything had changed, that I had become a foreigner, as if I were in the grip of a nightmare. I could see familiar faces all around me, but I could feel their awkwardness and bafflement.” It’s all horrible, she knows, but then she thinks about Jean. The shy couple take walks, listen to records together, visit each other’s families . . . and suddenly life is beautiful again. Berr is any young woman in love with a young man who loves her. But one evening she arrives home to discover that her father has been arrested. Raymond Berr spends three months in Drancy, an internment camp near Paris. Berr, her mother and sister visit, and they notice the working-class Jews all around them in the visitor’s room. “The four of us were so distant from those poor folk that we could hardly conceive that Papa was a prisoner too.” But Papa is a prisoner too, and slowly Berr’s consciousness begins to alter. Etablissements Kuhlmann eventually pays a ransom to have Raymond Berr released, and the family continues its life in Paris. Some of their friends escape to Vichy France, and yet the Berrs decide to stay put, out of a sense of dignity, steadfastly refusing to be cowardly, believing it important to stand together with other Frenchmen. Berr herself touchingly confesses that it’s “because of him [Jean] that I do not want to leave.” Everyone is in denial. Nobody can quite believe that worse is yet to come. Then it is announced that “Jews are no longer entitled to cross the Champs-Elysées. Theaters and restaurants are off-limits.” Neighbors begin to warn the family about a series of roundups. Hélène Berr starts to record what she hears as well as sees: “In Mlle Monsaingeon’s neighborhood, a whole family, the father, the mother, and five children, gassed themselves to escape the roundup. “One woman threw herself out of a window. “Apparently several policemen have been shot for warning people so they could escape. They were threatened with the concentration camp if they failed to obey.” More and more, Berr regards her journal as an aide-memoire, almost a reporter’s notebook: “I’m not even keeping this diary anymore, I’ve no willpower left, I’m just putting down the salient facts so as to remember them.” Take their young friend Pironneau. “Maman has gotten the details of his execution. It was on the day of the great parade, he was taken off at 7:00 A.M., with another man, in the prison van, with their coffins. There was nobody there to shoot them; they had to wait until 3:00 in the afternoon for a ‘volunteer’ to come and shoot them, obliging one of them to witness the other’s death.” Somewhat to her own surprise, Berr admits to a growing visceral hatred of the Krauts — and to anger at the frequent indifference of non-Jewish Parisians. She begins to work part-time at a Jewish-run agency intended to help deportees and their families, soon taking homeless children under her wing, even organizing a scout troop. Suddenly, Jean announces that he is leaving to join Charles de Gaulle’s Free French. At this point Hélène Berr stops writing in her journal for some 10 months, starting again only in the fall of 1943. Sadly, the once high-spirited young woman, full of plans for a life of scholarship and learning, dreaming of happiness with the man she loves, has virtually disappeared. The voice is somber now, philosophical, that of a mature woman who recognizes that death in a concentration camp is her most likely future. Berr’s only aim, until arrested, is to bear witness: “I have a duty to write because other people must know. Every hour of every day there is another painful realization that other folk do not know, do not even imagine, the suffering of other men, the evil that some of them inflict. And I am still trying to make the painful effort to tell the story. Because it is a duty, it is maybe the only one I can fulfill.” To ensure at least her journal’s survival, she passes along sections to the household cook, asking her to save the pages for Jean. Berr still daydreams about him, even imagines him reading the very page she is writing. But so much has been lost. “If only I could laugh! Jean liked laughing so much. Before, I used to laugh. Nowadays a sense of humor feels like sacrilege.” Still, Berr periodically strives to maintain a semblance of her old existence, fighting off despair to imagine that she will somehow survive. She studies and frequently quotes her beloved Keats, transcribes the reflections on World War I of the novelist Roger Martin du Gard, plays music, even reads Winnie-the-Pooh and retells Kipling’s “Rikki Tikki Tavi” to her young orphans. But she also finds herself loathing the barbaric Germans, who “dared to claim that I was not French.” And the horrible stories continue. Thirteen children from an orphanage are seized to make up the required 1,000 deportees for a convoy to the “East.” So many people have been killed, Berr writes, that “we have almost stopped grieving for the dead.” Her cousin, who is also her best friend, disappears into a concentration camp. “How many souls of infinite worth, repositories of gifts others should have treated with humility and respect, have been similarly crushed and broken by Germanic brutality?” For a long time, she cannot fathom why children and pregnant women are being seized by the Germans, until she finally recognizes the truth and sets it down: “They have one aim, which is extermination.” On March 8, 1944, at 7:30 in the morning, there was a knock at the door to the family’s apartment. Raymond and Antoinette Berr died later that year in Auschwitz. Hélène Berr nonetheless managed to survive and in 1945 was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where she grew sick from typhus and was then brutally beaten to death just five days before the camp was liberated by the British. David Bellos, the translator and biographer of Georges Perec, as well as a professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton, has created an exemplary American edition of Berr’s journal. It includes maps, an introductory essay, a memoir by Berr’s niece Mariette Job, a brief history of “France and the Jews” (by Bellos), and a half-dozen useful lists of books, acronyms, names and places.

The Journal of Hélène Berr has been an immense bestseller in Europe and deserves comparable success in this country. This, alas, is how it truly was when good people were heartlessly abused and their lives were ruthlessly taken from them.