The Halbjuden of Hitler's Germany were half Christian and half
Jewish but, like the rest of the Mischlinge (or "partial-Jews"),
were far too Jewish in the eyes of the Nazis. Thus, while they were
allowed for a time to coexist with the rest of German society, they
were granted only the most marginal or menial jobs, restricted from
marrying Aryans or even leading normal social lives, and sent
eventually to forced-labor and concentration camps. More than
70,000 Germans were subjected to these restrictions and
indignities, created and fostered by Hitler's morally bankrupt race
laws, yet to this day few personal accounts of their experiences
exist.
James Tent movingly recounts how these men and women from all
over Germany and from all walks of life struggled to survive in an
increasingly hostile society, even as their Jewish relatives were
disappearing into the East. It draws on extensive interviews with
twenty survivors, many of whom were teenagers when Hitler came to
power, to show how "half Jews" coped with conditions on a
day-to-day basis, and how the legacy of the hatred they suffered
has forever lingered in their minds.
Tent provides gripping stories of life beneath the boot-heel of
Nazi rule: a woman deemed unsuited for a career in nursing because
the shape of her earlobes and breasts indicated she was not
"racially suited," a man arrested for "race defilement" because he
lived with an Aryan woman, and many others. Writing with a deep and
abiding respect for his subjects, Tent shows how Nazi
discrimination and persecution affected the lives of the Mischlinge
beginning in 1933, and he tells how such treatment intensified
through the later years of the war.
These testimonies offer rare insight into how Nazi persecution
functioned at a very personal level. Tent's witnesses share
experiences in school and problems in the workplace, where the best
survival strategy was to find an unobtrusive niche in a nondescript
job. They tell of obstacles to personal and romantic relationships.
And they soberly remind us that by 1944 they too were rounded up
for forced labor, certain to be the next victims of Nazi
genocide.
"In the Shadow of the Holocaust" demonstrates the lengths to
which the Nazis were willing to go in order to eradicate Judaism-a
fanaticism that increased over time and even in the face of
impending military defeat. These people mostly survived the
Holocaust, yet they paid for their re-assimilation into German
society by remaining silent in the face of haunting memories. This
book breaks that silence and is a testament to human endurance
under the most trying circumstances.
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