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.

The Washington Post Notable Non-Fiction of 2013 On the seventy-fifth anniversary of Kristallnacht comes this untold story of a teenager whose act of defiance would have dire international consequences. On the morning of November 7, 1938, a seventeen-year-old Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, walked into the German embassy in Paris and in an act of desperation assassinated Ernst vom Rath, a low-level Nazi diplomat. He did it, he said, out “of love for my parents and for my people.” Two days later, vom Rath lay dead, and the Third Reich exploited his murder to inaugurate its long-planned campaign of terror against Germany’s Jewish citizens, in the mass pogrom that became known as Kristallnacht. In a bizarre concatenation of events that would rapidly involve Ribbentrop, Goebbels, and Hitler himself, Grynszpan would become the centerpiece of a Nazi propaganda campaign that would later describe his actions as "the first shot of the Jewish War." In The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan, best-selling author Jonathan Kirsch brings to light this wrenching story, reexamining the historical details and moral dimensions of one of the most enigmatic cases of World War II. Was Grynszpan a crazed lone gunman, or was he an agent of the Gestapo, recruited to provide a convenient pretext for a major escalation of Nazi aggression? Was he motivated by a desire to strike a blow for the Jewish people as an early partisan fighter, or did his act of violence speak to an intimate connection between the assassin and his target, as Grynszpan later claimed?In re-creating the life of this German-Polish refugee turned assassin, Kirsch convincingly demonstrates that the life of Herschel Grynszpan remains just as fascinating as the conspiracy theories that surround him. Challenging the perception of the European Jew as docile and unwilling to resort to violence in the face of aggression, Grynszpan was almost unanimously assailed by most German Jews, who were rightly fearful that the Nazis would use the murder to wreak widespread retribution. Yet he was at the same time embraced by the American journalist Dorothy Thompson, who rallied others to his international defense. Condemned by the likes of Goebbels at the time, he was still labeled as a "psychopath" and an agent provacateur by Hannah Arendt at the Eichmann trial two decades later.As Kristallnacht increasingly becomes known as an international day for remembrance, Jonathan Kirsch brilliantly succeeds here in illuminating both a single life cast into the shadows of history as well as the "countless tragic lives of Eastern European Jews in the terrible days leading up to World War II." 8 pages of photographs

Product Description: The genocide of Jewish and non-Jewish civilians perpetrated by the German regime during World War Two continues to confront scholars with elusive questions even after nearly seventy years and hundreds of studies. This multi-contributory work is a landmark publication that sees experts renowned in their field addressing these questions in light of current research...read more

Product Description: Wie setzen sich ehemalige jüdische Lagerhäftlinge und Emigranten im Alter mit ihren Erinnerungen an Deportation, Lagerhaft und Vertreibung sowie mit vielfältigen anderen Verlusten auseinander, in einer Lebensphase, in der die Intensität dieser Erinnerungen wieder deutlich zunimmt? Die Gesprächspartnerinnen und Gesprächspartner der Autoren leben heute in verschiedenen Ländern der Welt...read more

Product Description: Die geistes-, kultur- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Arbeiten, die sich im Dritten Reich' aus antisemitischer Perspektive mit Geschichte und Kultur des Judentums beschäftigten, stellen den markantesten Schnittpunkt von Wissenschaft und antisemitischer Propaganda sowie antij|discher Ideologie und nationalsozialistischer Politik dar...read more

Product Description: Henry Goldsmith ( Hines Goldschmitt) Born March 14, 1923, Died May 3, 2001. Henry wrote "My First Life" about his life before and during and after the Holocaust. How he survived those years not as a victim but how he used his courage, luck, and instinct to live a life that aloud him the escape, to work for the French Resentence in the German V-2 program, smuggling guns and other fighters under the noses of the Germans...read more

Documents the 1933 pact between the Third Reich and Jewish leaders which ended a boycott and anti-Nazi protests in exchange for permitting Jews to emigrate to Palestine

Drawing on eyewitness testimonies and period accounts of the event, a distinguished British historian offers a compelling account of Kristallnacht, the November 1938 rampage by Nazi storm troopers and Hitler Youth through Jewish neighborhoods throughout Germany, a nationwide destruction that ignited the devastation of the Holocaust. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Product Description: I was only thirteen, at the time, and it was a new experience. My co-worker and I were challenged to whet our whistle, so to speak, when we were introduced to the streetwalker.