This chapter explores the way German-Jewish diarists described and analyzed bystander behavior under the Nazi dictatorship. Focusing on the long-running diaries of Willy Cohn and Else Behrend-Rosenfeld it examines the deterioration of interpersonal relations, focusing on the shift from the social war against the Jews of the pre-war years to the total war of extermination between 1939 and 1945. Cohn’s and Behrend-Rosenfeld’s accounts of bystander behavior offer val-uable analytical clues for explaining the dynamics of persecution. Beneath the fatal net of anti-Jewish measures implemented by Nazi officials, state executives and openly anti-Semitic compatriots, however, Jews encountered a steady albeit ephemeral spirit of subjunctive solidarity. Many ordinary Germans seemed will-ing to offer some measure of empathy and help if Jews in turn acknowledged the sufferings of the increasingly embattled Volksgemeinschaft. These findings shed light on the origins of some of the most salient aspects in post-war German memory, notably the discourse of victimization and the reluctance to examine the role of millions of German bystanders in the rise of and drive behind Nazi policies.

Between 1935 and 1940, the Nazis incorporated large portions of Europe into the German Reich. The contributors to this volume analyze the evolving anti-Jewish policies in the annexed territories and their impact on the Jewish population, as well as the attitudes and actions of non-Jews, Germans, and indigenous populations. They demonstrate that diverse anti-Jewish policies developed in the different territories, which in turn affected practices in other regions and even influenced Berlin’s decisions. Having these systematic studies together in one volume enables a comparison - based on the most recent research - between anti-Jewish policies in the areas annexed by the Nazi state. The results of this prizewinning book call into question the common assumption that one central plan for persecution extended across Nazi-occupied Europe, shifting the focus onto differing regional German initiatives and illuminating the cooperation of indigenous institutions.

This paper addresses Geltungsjuden – children of a non-Jewish parent considered to be part of the Jewish community. Besides intermarried Jews, they were the second major group remaining “legally” in Germany even after June 1943, when Goebbels had declared Berlin “free of Jews.” Focusing on Berlin’s Jewish community as still the largest in Germany, I will follow those less than a thousand “last Jewish youngsters”, who – under the persisting threat of deportation – struggled for physical and spiritual survival. New research on German late-war Jewish communities generally focuses on the experience of Jews in hiding or mixed marriage families such as Beate Meyer’s magisterial work on Mischlinge as well as Susanna Schrafstetter’s and Max Strnad’s work on Munich. This paper examines the connections between ongoing deportations, a fluid Jewish identity and the coexistence of their in- and exclusion within the remaining Jewish community. At the same time, Geltungsjuden experienced everyday persecution, denunciations as well as occasional solidarity and help by Berlin’s non-Jewish population. There is a narrative in many testimonies of survivors who were deported in the years up to 1943, that Jewish life in Berlin ended with the dissolution of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden on June 10th, 1943. But actually, the Reichsvereinigung was never formally dissolved, as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt was interested in keeping the remainder of Jewish assets under their control, instead of handing everything over to the Oberfinanzpräsident - and thus, a letter dated August 1943 states, that the Reichsvereinigung in fact continued to exist beyond the deportation of its full-jewish members in early summer 1943. Parallel to that and equally lesser-known, the Jewish community of Berlin did not „collapse“ (as a Berlin survivor then in Theresienstadt expressed it) but continued to exist - a pale, absurd, yet quite real existence. When in May 1945 Geltungsjuden became the “first Jewish youth” of the post-war community, most of them had survived by Jewish as well as non-Jewish assistance. Thus, Geltungsjuden invite us to re-examine the complexity of Jewish and non-Jewish relations. This will contribute to our understanding of the last stage of the Holocaust, but will also help us understand how after the war, some of these survivors could call Berlin, of all places, their home.

Scholars of German-Jewish history have long thought of anti-Jewish pogroms as being characteristic of, and mostly confined to, medieval Germany or Imperial Russia. Yet, this view marginalizes the significance of anti-Jewish violence in Germany in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which occurred with surprising regularity and involved different degrees of violence. Historians, who have so far mainly focused on the development of antisemitic theories and politics, have neglected to analyze how antisemitic ideas and violence against Jews were connected during the formative years of modern antisemitism in Germany. The editors of this collection of essays set themselves the task of closing the gap between the theory of antisemitism and actual antisemitic violence. Inspired by a session of the 1997 annual conference of the German Studies Association, it brings together several case studies. These range from the “Hep Hep” riots of 1819 to the November Pogroms in 1938, thus span...