In August 1973, a convict named Jan-Erik Olsson walked into a bank on Norrmalmstorg square in central Stockholm, fired a shot into the ceiling, and took four employees hostage. Six days later, when the police finally moved in, something strange had happened. The captives had come to fear their rescuers more than the man holding the gun. The criminologist Nils Bejerot, advising the police, gave the reaction a name. The world now knows it as Stockholm syndrome.

The syndrome spares no one. When a power far greater than yourself takes you captive, the instinct for survival counsels appeasement: grow obedient, obliging, eager to please. “Death before dishonor” makes a fine motto, but the prisoners who carried it to its logical end are no longer around to recite it. Every group is susceptible, every human being without exception. So why does the affliction settle on Jews more heavily than on anyone else?