Download or read book Jews in Nazi Berlin written by Beate Meyer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-12-15 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though many of the details of Jewish life under Hitler are familiar, historical accounts rarely afford us a real sense of what it was like for Jews and their families to live in the shadow of Nazi Germany’s oppressive racial laws and growing violence. With Jews in Nazi Berlin, those individual lives—and the constant struggle they required—come fully into focus, and the result is an unprecedented and deeply moving portrait of a people. Drawing on a remarkably rich archive that includes photographs, objects, official documents, and personal papers, the editors of Jews in Nazi Berlin have assembled a multifaceted picture of Jewish daily life in the Nazi capital during the height of the regime’s power. The book’s essays and images are divided into thematic sections, each representing a different aspect of the experience of Jews in Berlin, covering such topics as emigration, the yellow star, Zionism, deportation, betrayal, survival, and more. To supplement—and, importantly, to humanize—the comprehensive documentary evidence, the editors draw on an extensive series of interviews with survivors of the Nazi persecution, who present gripping first-person accounts of the innovation, subterfuge, resilience, and luck required to negotiate the increasing brutality of the regime. A stunning reconstruction of a storied community as it faced destruction, Jews in Nazi Berlin renders that loss with a startling immediacy that will make it an essential part of our continuing attempts to understand World War II and the Holocaust.
Download or read book Submerged on the Surface written by Richard N. Lutjens, Jr. and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2019-09-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1941 and 1945, thousands of German Jews, in fear for their lives, made the choice to flee their impending deportations and live submerged in the shadows of the Nazi capital. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence and interviews with survivors, this book reconstructs the daily lives of Jews who stayed in Berlin during the war years. Contrary to the received wisdom that “hidden” Jews stayed in attics and cellars and had minimal contact with the outside world, the author reveals a cohort of remarkable individuals who were constantly on the move and actively fought to ensure their own survival.
Download or read book The Jewish Kulturbund Theatre Company in Nazi Berlin written by Rebecca Rovit and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Revealing the complex interplay between history and human lives under conditions of duress, Rebecca Rovit focuses on the eight-year odyssey of Berlin's Jewish Kulturbund Theatre. By examining why and how an all-Jewish repertory theatre could coexist with the Nazi regime. Rovit raises broader questions about the nature of art in an environment of coercion and isolation, artistic integrity and adaptability, and community and identity."--BACK COVER.
Download or read book Berlin for Jews written by Leonard Barkan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-11-04 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intro -- Contents -- Prologue: Me and Berlin -- 1. Places: Schönhauser Allee -- 2. Places: Bayerisches Viertel -- 3. People: Rahel Varnhagen -- 4. People: James Simon -- 5. People: Walter Benjamin -- Epilogue: Recollections, Reconstructions -- Acknowledgments -- Suggestions for Further Reading.
Download or read book The Last Jews in Berlin written by Leonard Gross and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-01-20 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller: The true story of twelve Jews who went underground in Nazi Berlin—and survived: “Consummately suspenseful” (Los Angeles Times). When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, approximately one hundred sixty thousand Jews called Berlin home. By 1943 less than five thousand remained in the nation’s capital, the epicenter of Nazism, and by the end of the war, that number had dwindled to one thousand. All the others had died in air raids, starved to death, committed suicide, or been shipped off to the death camps. In this captivating and harrowing book, Leonard Gross details the real-life stories of a dozen Jewish men and women who spent the final twenty-seven months of World War II underground, hiding in plain sight, defying both the Gestapo and, even worse, Jewish “catchers” ready to report them to the Nazis in order to avoid the gas chambers themselves. A teenage orphan, a black-market jewel trader, a stylish young designer, and a progressive intellectual were among the few who managed to survive. Through their own resourcefulness, bravery, and at times, sheer luck, these Jews managed to evade the tragic fates of so many others. Gross has woven these true stories of perseverance into a heartbreaking, suspenseful, and moving account with the narrative force of a thriller. Compiled from extensive interviews, The Last Jews in Berlin reveals these individuals’ astounding determination, against all odds, to live each day knowing it could be their last.
Download or read book Survival in the Shadows written by Barbara Lovenheim and published by Virago Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work tells the story of seven hidden jews in Hitler's Berlin. Rather than risking so-called resettlement they found themselves living in a shadowy underworld where they had to survive without identity cards and ration books.
Download or read book A Jewish Orchestra in Nazi Germany written by Lily E. Hirsch and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Offers a clear introduction to a fascinating, yet little known, phenomenon in Nazi Germany, whose very existence will be a surprise to the general public and to historians. Easily blending general history with musicology, the book provides provocative yet compelling analysis of complex issues." ---Michael Meyer, author of The Politics of Music in the Third Reich "Hirsch poses complex questions about Jewish identity and Jewish music, and she situates these against a political background vexed by the impossibility of truly viable responses to such questions. Her thorough archival research is complemented by her extensive use of interviews, which gives voice to those swept up in the Holocaust. A Jewish Orchestra in Nazi Germany is a book filled with the stories of real lives, a collective biography in modern music history that must no longer remain in silence." ---Philip V. Bohlman, author of Jewish Music and Modernity "An engaging and downright gripping history. The project is original, the research is outstanding, and the presentation lucid." ---Karen Painter, author of Symphonic Aspirations: German Music and Politics, 1900-1945 The Jewish Culture League was created in Berlin in June 1933, the only organization in Nazi Germany in which Jews were not only allowed but encouraged to participate in music, both as performers and as audience members. Lily E. Hirsch's A Jewish Orchestra in Nazi Germany is the first book to seriously investigate and parse the complicated questions the existence of this unique organization raised, such as why the Nazis would promote Jewish music when, in the rest of Germany, it was banned. The government's insistence that the League perform only Jewish music also presented the organization's leaders and membership with perplexing conundrums: what exactly is Jewish music? Who qualifies as a Jewish composer? And, if it is true that the Nazis conceived of the League as a propaganda tool, did Jewish participation in its activities amount to collaboration? Lily E. Hirsch is Assistant Professor of Music at Cleveland State University.
Download or read book Final Sale in Berlin written by Christoph Kreutzmüller and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-08 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the Nazis took power, Jewish businesspeople in Berlin thrived alongside their non-Jewish neighbors. But Nazi racism changed that, gradually destroying Jewish businesses before murdering the Jews themselves. Reconstructing the fate of more than 8,000 companies, this book offers the first comprehensive analysis of Jewish economic activity and its obliteration. Rather than just examining the steps taken by the persecutors, it also tells the stories of Jewish strategies in countering the effects of persecution. In doing so, this book exposes a fascinating paradox where Berlin, serving as the administrative heart of the Third Reich, was also the site of a dense network for Jewish self-help and assertion.
Download or read book On the Run in Nazi Berlin written by Bert Lewyn and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BERLIN, 1942. The Gestapo arrest eighteen-year-old Bert Lewyn and his parents, sending the latter to their deaths and Bert to work in a factory making guns for the Nazi war effort. Miraculously tipped off the morning the Gestapo round up all the Jews who work in the factories, Bert goes underground. He finds shelter sometimes with compassionate civilians, sometimes with people who find his skills useful and sometimes in the cellars of bombed-out buildings. Without proper identity papers, he survives as a hunted Jew in the flames and terror of Nazi Berlin in part by successfully mimicking non-Jews, even masquerading as an SS officer. But the Gestapo are hot on his trail... Before World War II, 160,000 Jews lived in Berlin. By 1945, only 3,000 remained alive. Bert was one of the few, and his thrilling memoir—from witnessing the famous 1933 book burning to the aftermath of the war in a displaced persons camp—offers an unparalleled depiction of the life of a runaway Jew caught in the heart of the Nazi empire.
Download or read book Jewish Life in Nazi Germany written by Francis R. Nicosia and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: German Jews faced harsh dilemmas in their responses to Nazi persecution, partly a result of Nazi cruelty and brutality but also a result of an understanding of their history and rightful place in Germany. This volume addresses the impact of the anti-Jewish policies of Hitler’s regime on Jewish family life, Jewish women, and the existence of Jewish organizations and institutions and considers some of the Jewish responses to Nazi anti-Semitism and persecution. This volume offers scholars, students, and interested readers a highly accessible but focused introduction to Jewish life under National Socialism, the often painful dilemmas that it produced, and the varied Jewish responses to those dilemmas.
Download or read book An Underground Life written by Gad Beck and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: That a Jew living in Nazi Berlin survived the Holocaust at all is surprising. That he was a homosexual and a teenage leader in the resistance and yet survived is amazing. But that he endured the ongoing horror with an open heart, with love and without vitriol, and has written about it so beautifully is truly miraculous. This is Gad Beck's story.
Download or read book Refuge in Hell written by Daniel B. Silver and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2004 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a close-up look at the little-known story of Berlin's Jewish Hospital, the only Jewish institution in Germany to survive the Holocaust, drawing on the accounts of survivors to describe daily life in the hospital under the Nazis, the machinations of hospital director Dr. Lustig, the medical staff and patients, and the hospital's liberation
Download or read book My German Question written by Peter Gay and published by Yale.ORIM. This book was released on 1998-10-07 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Not only a memoir, it’s also a fierce reply to those who criticized German-Jewish assimilation and the tardiness of many families in leaving Germany” (Publishers Weekly). In this poignant book, a renowned historian tells of his youth as an assimilated, anti-religious Jew in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1939—“the story,” says Peter Gay, “of a poisoning and how I dealt with it.” With his customary eloquence and analytic acumen, Gay describes his family, the life they led, and the reasons they did not emigrate sooner, and he explores his own ambivalent feelings—then and now—toward Germany its people. Gay relates that the early years of the Nazi regime were relatively benign for his family, yet even before the events of 1938–39, culminating in Kristallnacht, they were convinced they must leave the country. Gay describes the bravery and ingenuity of his father in working out this difficult emigration process, the courage of the non-Jewish friends who helped his family during their last bitter months in Germany, and the family’s mounting panic as they witnessed the indifference of other countries to their plight and that of others like themselves. Gay’s account—marked by candor, modesty, and insight—adds an important and curiously neglected perspective to the history of German Jewry. “Not a single paragraph is superfluous. His inquiry rivets without let up, powered by its unremitting candor.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “[An] eloquent memoir.” —The Wall Street Journal “A moving testament to the agony the author experienced.” —Chicago Tribune “[A] valuable chronicle of what life was like for those who lived through persecution and faced execution.” —Choice
Download or read book A Fatal Balancing Act written by Beate Meyer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1939 all German Jews had to become members of a newly founded Reich Association. The Jewish functionaries of this organization were faced with circumstances and events that forced them to walk a fine line between responsible action and collaboration. They had hoped to support mass emigration, mitigate the consequences of the anti-Jewish measures, and take care of the remaining community. When the Nazis forbade emigration and started mass deportations in 1941, the functionaries decided to cooperate to prevent the “worst.” In choosing to cooperate, they came into direct opposition with the interests of their members, who were then deported. In June 1943 all unprotected Jews were deported along with their representatives, and the so-called intermediaries supplied the rest of the community, which consisted of Jews living in mixed marriages. The study deals with the tasks of these men, the fate of the Jews in mixed marriages, and what happened to the survivors after the war.
Download or read book Germans No More written by Margarete Limberg and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011-08 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most books on Nazi Germany focus on the war years. Much less is known about the preceding years although these give important clues with regard to the events after November 1938, which culminated in the Holocaust. This book is based on eyewitness accounts chosen from the many memoirs that Harvard University received in 1940 after it had sent out a call to German-Jewish refugees to describe their experiences before and after 1933. These invaluable documents became part of the Harvard archives where the editors of this volume discovered them fifty years later. These memoirs, written so soon after the emigration when the impressions were still vivid, movingly describe the gradual deterioration of the situation of the Jews, the daily humiliations and insults they had to suffer, and their desperate attempts to leave Germany. An informative introduction puts these accounts into a wider framework.
Download or read book Days of Sorrow and Pain Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews written by Leonard Baker and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2020-07-13 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Days of Sorrow and Pain, winner of the 1979 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, tells the story of Germany’s Jews under the Nazis and of one man’s valiant efforts to help them meet the horrors of the Hitler regime. Leonard Baker explores the disintegration of German society, the plight of German Jews and the philosophy of Leo Baeck which enabled him to guide his people in their struggle for survival. After Hitler came to power, German Jews formed the Reichsvertretung with Leo Baeck at its head. As Berlin’s leading Rabbi and one of the foremost Jewish theologians in the world, Baeck was the rallying point for all Jewish factions. He dealt secretly with emissaries from abroad to arrange for Jews to emigrate and saw to it that Jewish children received a religious education. Young men were trained for the rabbinate in Berlin as late as 1942. Leo Baeck chose to remain in Germany as long as there were still Jews there. He was arrested five times, once after writing a prayer to be read in all German synagogues reminding Jews that even “in this day of sorrow and pain,” they bowed only before God and never before man. After his last arrest in 1943 at the age of 69, Rabbi Baeck was sent to Theresienstadt where he hauled trash carts by day, and organized educational programs for his fellow inmates at night, consoling them, becoming one of their strengths. After the war, having survived the Holocaust, Baeck never sought revenge, but worked for reconciliation between Germans and Jews. He became a world leader of liberal Judaism and never doubted the ultimate triumph of good over evil nor underestimated the responsibility of the individual to bring about that triumph. “Only now, more than twenty years after Baeck’s death, has Leonard Baker, a writer on American political history, given us a full life story. Drawing on nearly a hundred interviews with persons who knew Baeck and supplementing these with a rich variety of printed and archival sources, he has succeeded in fashioning an intriguing portrait of the rabbi-scholar called upon to assume leadership in a time of crisis. The inherent drama of the subject together with Baker’s practiced writing skill has made for a book of broad popular interest. It has even been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biography.” — Michael A. Meyer, American Jewish History “There are several outstanding reasons why this book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in biography. The evidence of extensive research and scholarship exists in one of the most complete oral and written bibliographies that is presently available on contemporary German Jewry. Baker’s writing style, journalistic at times, is free from conventional pedantry, but is satisfying enough for even the most stodgy academe. Furthermore, the historical flow of the text leaves little doubt that this is one serious author... Rabbi Baeck is shown as both the German as a Jew and the Jew as a German. Writing with an obvious appreciation for the role of the Jews in modern German history, Baker explains Baeck in the context of Reform Judaism...” — Michael W. Rubinoff, German Studies Review “Baker has written a marvelous account of Baeck’s long and remarkable life.” — Lew’s Author Blog “Baker tells Baeck’s story in relation to the history of the German Jews down to his death as an expatriate in England in the 1950s... Baker’s narrative is scholarly and simple in tone, as it should be; and although chiefly a study in Jewish history, it is also a study in historical tragedy and moral will...” — Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book Exodus to Berlin written by Peter Laufer and published by Ivan R. Dee Publisher. This book was released on 2003 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Exodus to Berlin" tells the story of the migration of Soviet block Jews who were invited by the German government to come make a new life in prosperous and democratic Germany.
