Between Dignity and Despair (First Printing) Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

Kaplan, Marion A.

ISBN 10: 0195115317 / ISBN 13: 9780195115314

Published by Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1998

About this Item

Studies In Jewish History; 1.1 X 6.5 X 9.3 inches; 290 pages; moderate foxing on the top exterior edge of textblock. Light foxing on the fore-edge of textblock and on front and rear endpapers. Minor foxing inside the DJ. Minor liquid exposure on the bottom of the DJ spine has caused the bottom of the cover's spine to lightly bleed onto the inside of the DJ. Minor stains to bottom DJ corners. Good condition otherwise. No other noteworthy defects. No markings. ; - Your satisfaction is our priority. We offer free returns and respond promptly to all inquiries. Your item will be carefully cushioned in bubble wrap and securely boxed. All orders ship on the same or next business day. Buy with confidence.

Seller Inventory # HVD-57800-A-0

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Between Dignity and Despair (First Printing) Jewish Life in Nazi Germany
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, New York, NY
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195115317
• ISBN 13: 9780195115314
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition; First Printing.
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

Between Dignity and Despair draws on the extraordinary memoirs, diaries, interviews, and letters of Jewish women and men to give us the first intimate portrait of Jewish life in Nazi Germany.
Kaplan tells the story of Jews in Germany not from the hindsight of the Holocaust, nor by focusing on the persecutors, but from the bewildered and ambiguous perspective of Jews trying to navigate their daily lives in a world that was becoming more and more insane. Answering the charge that Jews should have left earlier, Kaplan shows that far from seeming inevitable, the Holocaust was impossible to foresee precisely because Nazi repression occurred in irregular and unpredictable steps until the massive violence of Novemer 1938. Then the flow of emigration turned into a torrent, only to be stopped by the war. By that time Jews had been evicted from their homes, robbed of their possessions and their livelihoods, shunned by their former friends, persecuted by their neighbors, and driven into forced labor. For those trapped in Germany, mere survival became a nightmare of increasingly desperate options. Many took their own lives to retain at least some dignity in death; others went underground and endured the fears of nightly bombings and the even greater terror of being discovered by the Nazis. Most were murdered. All were pressed to the limit of human endurance and human loneliness.
Focusing on the fate of families and particularly women's experience, Between Dignity and Despair takes us into the neighborhoods, into the kitchens, shops, and schools, to give us the shape and texture, the very feel of what it was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany.

About the Author

Marion Kaplan is Professor of History at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author of The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (OUP), which won the National Jewish Book Award and the German History Prize and The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany. She lives in New York City.