A] welcome complement to historians' accounts of Jewish reactions to Nazi persecution before 1939. It richly maps the spatial, emotional and psychological effects of social abandonment, propaganda and the atomization of everyday life that made many Jews come to feel what National Socialist policy had always intended-that they were Germans no more. H-German In 1940, Harvard University sent out a call to all German-Jewish refugees to describe their experiences both before and after 1933. These invaluable documents were only discovered in the University archives some fifty years later by the editors of this volume. The memoirs, written so soon after the emigration when impressions were still vivid, movingly and tellingly describe the gradual deterioration of the living conditions for Jews in Germany in the time period leading up to the war-the daily humiliations they had to suffer, and their desperate attempts to leave Germany.
A great deal is written about Nazi Germany during war time, yet little is known about the years that preceded the war. Based on these collected eyewitness accounts, and with an informative introduction that places these experiences within a wider historical framework, this important book sheds new light on this time period. As this collection powerfully illustrates, these preceding years provide important clues and insights to the events that took place after November 1938, culminating in the Holocaust. Any attempt to come to grips with this dark period in history must take the revelations provided in this book into account.
Margarete Limberg studied political science at the universities of Hamburg and Berlin. She is working as a broadcaster for German radio in Berlin. Her special areas of interest are contemporary history and policies in the arts and education.
Hubert Rubsaat studies history, sociology, philosophy, and education at the University of Cologne. He works as broadcaster for North German radio where he heads the section on contemporary history and policies in education.
Alan Nothnagle has taught history at the University of Iowa and the Europa- Universitat Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder. He currently lives and works as a freelance writer and translator in Berlin."