Xlibris Releases Before the Holocaust:
New Book examines the German-Jewish experience 1870-1939 through three autobiographies
Belmont, MA (Vocus/PRWEB) December 14, 2010
Many books have been written about one of history’s darkest episodes, the Holocaust, but fewer have explored the time leading up to this horrific event. Author Thomas Dunlap guides readers of Before The Holocaust through the lives of three German Jews spanning the years from 1870 to 1939: Käte Frankenthal, Max Moses Polke, and Joseph Benjamin Levy.
Käte Frankenthal, was an unconventional, independent-minded, secular, intellectual feminist and passionate social democrat. Defying the conventions of the time, she pursued a professional life as a physician and politician. Being Jewish was to her "a fate of birth," and little else, for she never expresses any attachment to Judaism. Her real commitment was to her work as a doctor, to socialist politics, and to public health reform. Her autobiography reveals a keen and observant mind, self-aware and self-critical. We can learn much from her story about education and university life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the medical profession, the First World War and the dislocation and disorientation of German life in its aftermath. An important figure in Weimar politics, she gives us a rare and perceptive insider view of this turbulent and complex period. Her years in exile as she wanders about Europe shed light on the difficult plight of Jewish refugees in a largely unwelcoming world.
Max Moses Polke takes readers to Breslau, the capital of Silesia and home to the third-largest Jewish community in Germany. He was a practicing Jew and early supporter of Zionism. The account of the early years of his life is particularly noteworthy for the description of the nationalistic indoctrination at school prior to the First World War and the militaristic spirit that so deeply pervaded much of German life. Max Polke served his country in the First World War and came face to face with what seemed to be an ineradicable anti-Semitism. After the war he continued his studies and became a lawyer and notary. His story chronicles the transformation of German life in the Weimar Republic and after the rise of the Nazis from within the legal community. His extensive use of contemporary documents allows us to follow in some detail how the Nazi state went about systematically destroying the livelihood of Jewish lawyers.
Joseph Benjamin Levy, a teacher and cantor in Frankfurt for most of his working life, provides a broad insight into the Jewish community, offering details of community life from the schools to the B'nai B’rith lodges. In his identity as a Jew he is at the other end of the spectrum from the radically secular Käte Frankenthal. At the same time, of all three he is the most passionate and eloquent about his German identity, intensely and proudly patriotic. He represents that large segment of German Jews who were thoroughly convinced that one could be completely German and completely Jewish. All the greater was his anguish and pain at being systematically excluded from German society, whose values he had tried so hard to embrace all his life.
These autobiographies reveal what sort of lives were possible for Jews in the years after the establishment of the Reich in 1871, when German Jews were finally granted full political and civic right. They provide insight into German society, into the turbulent history and politics of the Weimar period, and into the circumstances that led to the rise of the National Socialists. Finally, they chronicle the assault on the Jewish community in the years 1933 to 1939, before the onset of systematic genocide.
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About the Author
Thomas Dunlap (M. A. History, Harvard University) is an academic translator. His published translations include Karl Dietrich Bracher, Turning Points in Modern History: Essays on European and German History (Harvard University Press, 1995), Ute Deichmann, Biologists under Hitler (Harvard University Press, 1996), Michael Stolleis, The Law under the Swastika: Studies on Legal History in the Third Reich (The University of Chicago Press, 1998), Kiran Klaus Patel, Soldiers of Labor: Labor Service in Germany and the US, 1933-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Wolfgang Benz, A Concise History of the Third Reich (California University Press, 2006), and Dirk Schumann, Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933: Battle for the Streets and Fear of Civil War (Berghahn Books, 2009). He lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.
Before The Holocaust
Three German-Jewish Lives, 1870-1939
Edited and translated by Thomas Dunlap
Publication Date: December 9, 2010
Trade Paperback; $24.99; 455 pages; 978-1-4568-1863-0
Trade Hardback; $34.99; 455 pages; 978-1-4568-1864-7
EBook; $9.99; 978-1-4568-1865-4
Members of the media who wish to review this book may request a complimentary paperback copy by contacting the publisher at +0800-644-6988. To purchase copies of the book for resale, please fax Xlibris at 44-203-006-8880 or call +0800-644-6988.
For more information on self-publishing or marketing with Xlibris, visit http://www. Xlibris. com. To receive a free publishing guide, please call (888) 795-4274.
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