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The author demonstrates how the Yishuv’s Zionist leadership had to confront the terrifying news arriving from the European continent ; how far this leadership believed what they heard and how important it considered the facts revealed to them. Cohen also considers how this influenced the development of a national homeland, itself threatened. She depicts the abyss separating the policies of an often powerless Zionist Executive and the struggle of ghetto insurgency for Jewish existence. In November 1942, when the genocide became known, the independence of a Jewish state seemed far away.