In the Shadow of the Holocaust
Subtitle: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans (Modern War Studies)
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: March 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 280
ISBN-13: 9780700612284
Subjects: European history: Second World War; Jewish studies; Political oppression & persecution; The Holocaust; Inter-war period, 1918-1939; Second World War, 1939-1945; Holocaust; Germany - History - Third Reich (1933-1945); Jewish Holocaust; Oral history; History; History - General History; History: World; Germany; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Nazi persecution; Europe - Germany; Jewish - General; Military - World War II; Jewish Christians
First sentence: The demographics in Germany were such that the bulk of marriages between Jews and Christians took place in the decade surrounding the First World War and with growing frequency in the years of the Weimar Republic.
Description: "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 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 still lingers 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."

"In the Shadow of the Holocaust demonstrates the lengths to which the Nazis were willing to go in order to eradicate Jewish blood - 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 reassimilation 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."--Jacket.