Customer Reviews

In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans (Modern War Studies)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I picked up this book, I was uncertain I would find the topic all that interesting -- once started, I found I couldn't put the book down. An unheard of experience with an academic history. Professor Tent is a distinguished historian whose earlier work has been characterized by meticulous research and flawless analysis. This book is no exception, and yet it is so well-written and engrossing that it reads both quickly and well. As with his earlier works, Prof. Tent has chosen a subject about which little has been written and has again produced a masterpiece of the historian's art. Obviously a man of considerable decency, Tent treats his subjects with deep respect and sympathy when he uses interviews with the aging survivors to bring about an understanding for their plight and the keen sense of an inexorably tightening official noose as the war progressed. "In the Shadow of the Holocaust" effects the reader on several levels for it is not only an excellent scholarly study of the these now all but forgotten victims of National Socialism, but of the very human impact that experience had on them and would continue to have for the remainder of their lives. I am very grateful for the impulse that led me to read this book -- it is a treasure not only as a superb history, but also as a recounting of a unique human experience.

I read this book for Dr. Bryan Mark Rigg's class at SMU and I was very impressed. It is very rare that you hear about the "half-Jews" during the Third Reich. It was very detailed and opened the study of the Holocaust wide open. No longer will teachers focus simply on the concentration camps, but now will also look at those forced into seclusion for being, as Hitler called them, "half-breeds." Well researched on an obscure topic. I enjoyed the book very much, must read to fully understand the Holocaust

James Tent has done a masterful work of discussing the history of "Mischlinge" (partial-Jews) during the Third Reich. His well written account tells the tragic stories of countless "Mischlinge" and the struggles they faced under Hitler. In a largely unknown field of research, Tent sheds light on a chapter of Nazism that is deserving of more study. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of the Holocaust and the Third Reich.