The Koch Papers had its origins in two important appointments that Koch received in recent years. In 2004, he was selected by the president to lead the U.S. government delegation to the international conference on anti-Semitism held in Berlin. The following year, he was appointed to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, which oversees the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Given Koch's new prominence as a spokesman on issues related to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, it seemed the time had come to prepare a volume showcasing the many important statements he has made on these subjects over the years.

One of the most fascinating aspects of The Koch Papers is the inclusion of never-before-seen private correspondence between Koch and prominent public figures about anti-Semitism, from Woody Allen to African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates.

The correspondence with Allen revolves around Koch's 2002 call for a boycott of France in response to rising French anti-Semitism. Allen strongly opposed a boycott.

"I happen to be one of Mr. Allen's fans, and I had the honor and pleasure of making a cameo appearance in his film 'Manhattan Stories' when I was mayor," Koch noted. "I also run into him on occasion because our taste in restaurants is apparently rather similar." But Koch pulled no punches in telling Allen that his statements defending France and opposing a boycott "have given the French people and their government undeserved cover for their tolerance of anti-Semitic behavior and shamefully inadequate response to it."

Readers will be surprised to discover on which points Allen refused to yield, and on which ones he backed down.

The exchanges with Woody Allen are particularly interesting in light of another segment of the book: the recent exchange that Mayor Koch and I had with the French ambassador to the United States after the ambassador claimed, erroneously, that anti-Semitic incidents in France had decreased by 47% in the past year.

Koch's straightforward style has a way of getting others to speak up, and in this book we present, for the first time in print, an intriguing discussion that he ignited in 2004-2005 about how to respond to anti-Semitism on campuses.

Focusing on the controversy over a cartoon in a Rutgers University newspaper mocking the Holocaust, Mayor Koch initiated correspondence with university presidents, scholars and free speech specialists about whether Rutgers was correct that it was powerless to respond. Among those weighing in on the controversy: Rutgers president Richard McCormick; Princeton president Shirley Tilghman; the then-president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers; constitutional expert Frederick Schwarz; and former U.S. senator Bob Kerrey.

Koch's lifetime of confronting anti-Semitism becomes more relevant every time one glances at the day's news. From the recent poll showing almost one-third of Americans think Jews are disloyal, to the widespread anti-Semitism in the Arab media and schoolbooks, anti-Semitism is on the rise throughout the world and there is no respite in sight.

Just last week, new figures released by British Jewish leaders revealed that anti-Semitic violence in England reached a record level in 2007, with 114 assaults. That figure is the highest since the tracking of such attacks began in 1984.

Meanwhile, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the wearing of baseball caps has become widespread among Orthodox Jewish men in France who fear that wearing a yarmulke will invite anti-Semitic attacks. Jewish women, too, "have been hiding signs of their Jewishness," according to the report. "Many tuck away the Stars of David or Sephardic hamsa ornaments they wear around their necks before going out." The environment of fear has prompted many Jewish parents to pull their children out of public schools, and has encouraged others to emigrate to Israel. The number of French Jews moving to Israel last year, 2,717, is triple the number who went in 2000.

Anti-Semitism here in the United States, and in Ed Koch's beloved Big Apple, is naturally a significant topic of discussion in The Koch Papers. Subjects such as anti-Semitism in the guise of hostility to Israel, celebrity anti-Semitism, and the recent attacks on the "Israel lobby" receive their due. Appropriate attention is also devoted to Koch's well-known clashes with African-American leaders who have made anti-Jewish remarks, such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Yet at the same time, Koch searches for common ground between the Jewish and African-American communities, in an important and hopeful essay, written expressly for this volume, titled "Black-Jewish Relations: Looking Ahead."

One section of the book focuses on the most horrific manifestation of anti-Semitism in history, the Holocaust. Koch's perspective, particularly with regard to how the Allies responded to the Nazi genocide, pulls no punches. In an interview included in the book, conducted just before international leaders gathered at Auschwitz to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the camp's liberation, Koch remarked:

"The death of millions of Jews has to weigh on the consciences of the many nations that could have made a difference by giving refuge to the Jews. It would be a small atonement, but the world leaders who attend the Auschwitz ceremony should get down on their knees and ask God to forgive them for how their countries acted during the Holocaust."

Elsewhere in the interview, Koch strongly criticized President Franklin Roosevelt for barring America's doors to Jewish refugees and refusing to bomb the death camps.

Koch had sharp words for the Holocaust-era American Jewish leadership, too:

"Jewish leaders did not do enough. Did they get arrested? Maybe they would have, if some other group was being persecuted. Some of them thought [that] the less they said, the better - or that they shouldn't say as much as they would like, because it would increase anti-Semitism. They should have stormed the gates of the White House to demand action. But they were afraid of anti-Semitism - afraid they would 'make things worse.' Only a few people spoke out, like Ben Hecht, and of course Henry Morgenthau, the secretary of the treasury, whom we revere for his role in convincing Roosevelt finally to create the War Refugee Board, which saved some Jewish lives late in the war."

As readers will discover, The Koch Papers also contains two unexpected treats. One is a foreword by Pete Hamill which is really an essay itself, and a fascinating one at that. Hamill, the outspoken Irish-American newspaperman, best-selling novelist, and former editor-in-chief of the New York Post and New York Daily News, eloquently recalls the contrast between his neighborhood's joy at the end of World War II and the gruesome scenes of the liberated Nazi death camps which he, as a child, watched on newsreels in the local RKO movie house.

"When I was about eight, I was convinced that if God could talk to us, He would sound like President Roosevelt," Hamill writes. "But the footage from Buchenwald made me think other things, none of them spoken, all of them creating doubts that would last a lifetime. Later I would know that my unspoken questions were shared by millions of others. Where was Roosevelt?"

In this book, Hamill notes, "Koch remembers his own version of what I saw in the RKO Prospect: those first films from Buchenwald and Auschwitz. There was a major difference. I saw them as a Catholic school boy. Ed Koch saw them through the eyes of a tough proud Jew, the knowing eyes of a New Yorker, the eyes of an infantryman at whom bullets had been fired with intent to kill. And he, too, was shocked. In these pieces Koch is not speaking as a former Mayor of New York. He speaks, over and over again, as a Jew, and as a rememberer. I always saw him then (and now) as the very best kind of American: a free man, who says what he believes should be said, directly, without fear. He is also, in this time of pervasive national amnesia, an American with memory."

The Koch Papers also includes a powerful statement from a Catholic at the opposite end of the political spectrum. A blurb from conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. praises Koch's "extraordinary determination," his "obvious and fine instincts," and his "commitment to fighting the awful, sinful practice of anti-Semitism."

Anti-Semitism is one of the few issues on which Pete Hamill and William Buckley will agree, and The Koch Papers may be the only book that will ever bear endorsements from both of them. Chalk up another first for Ed Koch!

Editor's Note: Ed Koch will be signing copies of "The Koch Papers: My Fight Against Anti-Semitism" at Barnes & Noble, 1972 Broadway (66th St.), New York City, on Wednesday, March 5, at 7:30 p.m.