Customer Reviews

Victims and Neighbors: A Small Town in Nazi Germany Remembered

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This book tells the very neglected story of how decent Germans in a small town reacted to the attacks on their Jewish neighbors on a case study basis. It is often forgotten that between the start of World War Two and their deportations to Poland, Jews still trapped in Germany led an increasingly impossible existence. By restricting Jews'transportation, food rations, money and shopping access, Nazi policy would have starved Jews quickly, had not some Gentiles made it their job to help. This is the first study that documents how elderly Jews relied heavily on neighbors, shopkeepers and officials who gave them extra food, shopped for them or tried to shield them from abuse. The author, unfortunately, chooses to take a pollyannish view of this small town. Obviously the fact that the Jews are eventually all deported and killed should be balanced in this book. Moreover, the author relies overmuch on the helpers' own postwar testimony, and really picks out only a small handful of real helpers. However, the gist of this defense is backed up in other diaries and histories-- eg. "I Will Bear Witness" by Klemperer, "Days of Sorrow and Pain" and "Lost In a Labyrinth of Red Tape." As one reviewer has stated, these testimonies should temper the "nation-of-beasts" thrust of Goldhagen and other Holocaust historians.