“This exquisite, deeply disturbing memoir of growing up half-Jewish in the Third Reich presents a beautifully drawn portrait of a loving family forced to endure unforgivable trauma and loss. Written by a distinguished scholar with the assistance of his older sister, it traces the development of antisemitism in Germany thus providing gripping – horrific – details of how Nazi policies decimated one family. The two parents – soulmates who loved each other and their children – could be any of us. To watch as their world crumbled, and view the harmful toll the Nazis inflicted on the entire family, is painful beyond words but is a necessary reminder of the harm hatred and prejudice can do. Most importantly, the book resonates with the authors' love for their extraordinary parents and is a striking tribute to the resilience of the human soul.”
— Kristen Renwick Monroe, Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Political Science at UC Irvine and the founding Director of the UCI Ethics Center.
“Thomas Paul Bernstein in his Holocaust: German History and Our Half-Jewish Family, concisely but limpidly offers an exceedingly rare description and analysis of how at least some Jews were able to survive in Germany during the Nazi reign. They did so not only through luck but by elements in German history and Nazi race theory that are little known and here illuminated.
Veterans of the German army warranted special privileges; and “half-Jews” gained a separate, protected status, at least for some, at least for a temporary respite.
In showing how this affected him and his family, Bernstein, while in no way downplaying the viciousness of the Nazi regime, brings us to a more complex understanding of how Nazi institutions worked in practice.
If I knew about the special concern for Jewish war veterans before, I had forgotten. Hermann Goering, a member of Hitler’s inner circle, chief of the Air Force, ordered that Jewish veterans be released even as he sped up the persecution of non-veteran Jews. Hitler himself enabled the commanding officer, a Jew, of the unit in which he – Hitler – served during World War I – to survive the war.
The most moving chapters are those that describe what it was like to live in Germany during the Nazi years and why his parents didn't try to emigrate before it was too late.
The major reason for staying was his father’s love for Germany and his mother’s attachment to the German language. His father was also too proud to leave, believing it was wrong to run away: “He, like many German Jews, regarded the Nazis as un-German”. And in a particularly acute insight, Bernstein states: “In addition, his eagerness to learn about contemporary political developments often made him forget that he personally might be affected by what was happening.” They had of course “… learned about the terrible mistreatment of people in the concentration camps but thought of them as acts of individual sadists who were inspired by Nazi praise for brutality: “No one, including we, could imagine what was to come.”
And even when he "knew better” in 1938, when someone stole some money, his father insisted that they complain to the police.
I was stunned by the courage displayed by his mother and father: "Our parents learned that friends had been incarcerated in one of the (local prisons). They phoned this place pretending to be SA(Storm Trooper} members, claimed that a mistake had been made and that they should be released, which indeed happened."
Bernstein also writes quite candidly that “I was not circumcised, a practice which in Germany was mainly performed on Jews, and so I lack this affirmation of membership in the Jewish community, but this no doubt enabled me to survive.”
His mother got a job with a steel wholesale company:” The director and a manager were not Nazis and were protective of her. They “regarded the Nazis as rowdies.”
The book demonstrates “… some Germans took great risks by helping our family…” including a prelate “…. who prayed for the persecuted Jews and died en route to Dachau.”
Bernstein concludes his book by expressing his concern about the rise of a new Right in Germany. And for good measure, expands those dire thoughts to what is happening in a Trump-threatened United States. In both cases, there are “…millions of people who will continue to hope for a strong authoritarian leader who can “save the country.”
The writing in this book is direct, clear, and elegant in its simplicity.”
— Irving Leonard Markovitz, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Queens College and the Graduate Center of CUNY
“Prof. Bernstein’s book appeals both to our emotions as well as our intellect. It is a moving personal memoir and family history as well as a compelling history of German-Jewish relations in the 19th and 20th century, the emergence and irrationality of antisemitism, and the nightmare that followed.
German Fascism, we see, did not start with Auschwitz and the gas chambers, nor did it start with the so-called Kristallnacht, now usually referred to as November pogroms. It started, much earlier, with words and poisoning language, uttered not only by politicians and party propagandists but also by renowned intellectuals and artists, ostracizing and demonizing a group of people, many of whom, like Thomas Bernstein’s father, a veteran of WW I, considered themselves German at heart. As a historian and academic of political science, Bernstein offers many a detail that will be new information even for those familiar with the dark, 20th-century German history. It is also enlightening regarding present-day politics, as we witness Western democracies under threat by autocratic and populist leaders and movements. “Beware of the Beginnings”, and “Never Again”, are the clear messages to the reader.
I only wish Prof. Bernstein’s father had known that his small son, who just started school when he was murdered in Auschwitz, would grow to become a successful academic and write this moving family memoir in the distant future!”
— Dr. phil. Regula Venske, President emerita of German PEN
“This moving memoir tells the Holocaust experiences of a family in which the father was Jewish, but the wife was not. So Tom Bernstein and his older sister Barbara were only half-Jewish, both born after Hitler came to power. Their parents thought that the father’s status as a veteran and the mother not being Jewish would protect them. Much of the memoir tells how mistaken that hope was, with both parents losing jobs, having to move several times, entering into a divorce to try to protect the children, and the father eventually forced into a ghetto and then transported to Auschwitz, where he was murdered. But this is also an inspiring account of determination to survive and a mother’s efforts to rely on networks of friends to help look after her children, as the family repeatedly escaped arrest threats and temporary separations. Tom was brought to America after the war to live with a Cornell professor who had forged a bond with his father in Germany in the 1920s, and he went on to become a very successful specialist on Chinese politics, teaching at both Yale and then Columbia. As a close friend of Tom’s for many years, I was stunned to learn how disrupted and chaotic his early life had been, so different from my own, and this memoir serves as an inspiring example of Tom’s ability to overcome unbelievably awful early life experiences and build a successful life.”
— Martin K. Whyte Harvard University
