Modern Jewish History

A spy thriller biography documenting one man's moral courage in the face of Hitler's death machine.

Songs of Sonderling is the story of Jacob Sonderling's unique contributions to Jewish liturgical music. Rabbi Sonderling was many things: a descendant of Chassidic rebbes, a rationalist, a Reform rabbi, a Zionist, an army chaplain, a celebrated orator, an artistic soul. From his early career at the Hamburg Temple and German Army service in World War I, to his wandering years in the Eastern United States and founding of the Society for Jewish Culture–Fairfax Temple in Los Angeles, Sonderling cultivated a unique aesthetic vision of Judaism, a "five-sense appeal." Jonathan L. Friedmann and John F. Guest document and analyze Sonderling's experience and expression of Judaism through music. Rabbi Sonderling's vision yielded liturgical commissions from exiled Viennese Jewish composers who arrived in Los Angeles in the 1930s and 1940s. Through these musical settings, activities at the Fairfax Temple, and involvement with the Los Angeles campus of the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Sonderling made an indelible mark on the city's Jewish community and the wider musical world. Songs of Sonderling focuses on the commissions Sonderling made from 1938 to 1945: Ernst Toch's Cantata of the Bitter Herbs, Arnold Schoenberg's Kol Nidre, Erich Wolfgang Korngold's A Passover Psalm and Prayer, and Eric Zeisl's Requiem Ebraico. Through musical analyses and an examination of Sonderling's career in Los Angeles, Friedmann and Guest contribute to the study of Jewish liturgical music, to Jewish history in the American West, to Jewish identity in the twentieth century, and to Jewish diaspora writ large.

Following the horrors of Kristallnacht in November of 1938, frightened parents were forced to find refuge for their children, far from the escalating anti-Jewish violence. To that end, a courageous group of Belgian women organized a desperate and highly dangerous rescue mission to usher nearly 1,000 children out of Germany and Austria. Of these children, ninety-three were placed on a freight train, traveling through the night away from their families and into the relative safety of Vichy France. Ranging in age from five to sixteen years, the children along with their protectors spent a harsh winter in an abandoned barn with little food before eventually finding shelter in the isolated Château de la Hille in southern France. While several of the youngest children were safely routed to the United States, those who remained continued to be hunted by Nazi soldiers until finally smuggled illegally across the Swiss Alps to safe houses. Remarkably, all but eleven of the original ninety-three children survived the war due to the unrelenting efforts of their protectors and their own resilience. In The Children of La Hille, Reed narrates this stunning firsthand account of the amazing rescue and the countless heroic efforts of those who helped along the way. As one of the La Hille children, Reed recalls with poignant detail traveling from lice-infested, abandoned convents to stately homes in the foothills of the Pyrenees, always scrambling to keep one step ahead of the Nazis. Drawing upon survivor interviews, journals, and letters, Reed affectionately describes rousing afternoon swims in a nearby natural pond and lively renditions of Molière plays performed for an audience of local farmers. He tells of heart-stopping near misses as the Vichy police roundups intensified, forcing children to hide in the woods to escape capture. The Children of La Hille gives readers an intimate glimpse of a harrowing moment in history, paying tribute to ordinary people acting in extraordinary ways.

Seven decades after the Nazis annihilated the Jewish community of Tomaszow-Mazowiecki, Poland, comes a gripping eyewitness narrative told by one of the youngest survivors of the Holocaust, as well as through first-hand accounts of other Tomaszow survivors. This unique communal memoir presents a rare view of Eastern European Jewry, before, during, and after World War II. It is both the memoir of a child and of a lost Jewish community, an unvarnished story in which disputes, controversy, and scandal all play a role in capturing the true flavor of life in this time and place. Nearly 14,000 Jews, one-third of the town's population, resided in Tomaszow-Mazowiecki before World War II, many making their living as tailors and seamstresses. Only 250 of them survived the Holocaust, in part because of their skill with a needle and thread. Engaging and highly accessible, The Tailors of Tomaszow is a powerful resource for educators and a compelling read for anyone wishing to gain a deeper, more personal understanding of Eastern European Jewry and the Holocaust.

"Please, Mama, I don't want to live like this," pleaded twelve-year-old Estelle Glaser's older sister as they watched the bodies of friends dangle from the gibbet in the center of the appelplatz of the Madjanek concentration camp. "I cannot take the indignities and brutalities. Let's step forward and make them kill us now." But Estelle's mother fiercely responded to her two daughters: No! Life is sacred. It is noble to fight to stay alive. Their mother's indomitable will was a major factor in the trio's survival in the face of brutal odds. But Estelle recognized other heroes in the ghetto and camps as well, righteous individuals who stood out like beacons and kept their spirits alive. Their father was one, as were hungry teachers in dim, cold rooms who risked their lives to secretly teach imprisoned children. Estelle herself learned to draw on a joyful past, and to bring her own light into the void. Estelle's memoir, published sixty-four years after her liberation from the Nazis, is a narrative of fear and hope and resiliency. While it is a harrowing tale of destruction and loss, it is also a story of the goodness that still exists in a dark world, of survival and renewal.

Ravensbrück was the only major Nazi concentration camp for women. Between 1939 and 1945, it was the site of murder by slave labor, torture, starvation, shooting, lethal injection, medical experimentation, and gassing. In its six-year history, 132,000 women from twenty-seven countries were imprisoned in Ravensbrück. Only about 15,000 in all survived. Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück reclaims the lost identities of these victims. Together with a team of researchers, Judith Buber Agassi interviewed 138 survivors of Ravensbrück on four continents. Using the survivor testimonies to corroborate her research from major archives in Germany, Israel, and the United States, as well as from transport and death registration lists and from records that were smuggled out of the camp before liberation, Buber Agassi constructs an image of the women of Ravensbrück: their countries of origin, age distribution, professional roles prior to the war, religious backgrounds, and the types of social interactions and emotional support that existed among and between the various groups of women. To date, Buber Agassi has recovered the identity of over 16,000 Ravensbrück prisoners.

How does a society reconcile itself in a post-genocide era? How can generations of those whose families were victims and victimizers break the cycle of hate, mistrust, shame, and guilt that characterizes their relationship? What family reactions do they face as they seek to begin the act of sitting across from each other and facing their legacies? For more than two decades, Gottfried Wagner, great-grandson of composer Richard Wagner, whose music inspired Adolf Hitler and whose family helped the Nazis rise to power, and Abraham J. Peck, the son of two survivors whose entire families were murdered in the Holocaust, have been engaged in a unique and often torturous discussion on the German-Jewish relationship after the Shoah. That discussion has focused on their family histories and on the myths and realities of the relationship between Germans and Jews since the beginning of the nineteenth century and the process of reshaping that relationship for those Germans and Jews born after 1945. Rejecting the notion that they are either victims or perpetrators, both authors examine the "unwanted legacies" they inherited and have had to confront and overcome.

By all accounts, Uriah Phillips Levy, the first Jewish commodore in the U.S. Navy, was both a principled and pugnacious man. On his way to becoming a flag officer, he was subjected to six courts-martial and engaged in a duel, all in response to antisemitic taunts and harassment from his fellow officers. Yet he never lost his love of country or desire to serve in its navy. When the navy tried to boot him out, he took his case to the highest court and won. This richly detailed historical novel closely follows the actual events of Levy's life: running away from his Philadelphia home to serve as a cabin boy at age ten; his service during the War of 1812 aboard the Argus and internment at the notorious British prison at Dartmoor; his campaign for the abolition of flogging in the Navy; and his purchase and restoration of Monticello as a tribute to his personal hero, Thomas Jefferson. Set against a broad panorama of U.S. history, Commodore Levy describes the American Jewish community from 1790 to 1860, the beginnings of the U.S. Navy, and the great nautical traditions of the Age of Sail before its surrender to the age of steam.

During his long career, Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise received letters with only two words written on the envelope: "Rabbi USA." But the United States Postal Service was never in doubt about the intended recipient: there was only one "Rabbi USA." No other rabbi before or since has dominated the American and the international scene with such passion and power. Both his admirers and opponents-there was no shortage of either group-acknowledged him as the premier leader of the American Jewish community and a major political figure. Pillar of Fire goes behind the headlines and the once-closed archives of the White House and the State Department to reveal the complex and controversial personal relationship between Wise and President Franklin D. Roosevelt when millions of lives hung in the balance during the Holocaust. It also explores Wise's remarkable relationships with both President Woodrow Wilson and United States Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Finally, the book describes how Wise's extraordinary actions in the realm of social justice and human rights permanently influenced America's religious landscape.

Despite their common heritage, Jews born and raised on opposite sides of the Polish-Soviet border during the interwar period acquired distinct beliefs, values, and attitudes. Variances in civic commitment, school lessons, youth activities, religious observance, housing arrangements, and perceptions of security deeply influenced these adolescents who would soon face a common enemy. Set in two cities flanking the border, Grodno in the interwar Polish Republic and Vitebsk in the Soviet Union, Borderland Generation traces the prewar and wartime experiences of young adult Jews raised under distinct political and social systems. Each cohort harnessed the knowledge and skills attained during their formative years to seek survival during the Holocaust through narrow windows of chance. Antisemitism in Polish Grodno encouraged Jewish adolescents to seek the support of their peers in youth groups. Across the border to the east, the Soviet system offered young Vitebsk Jews opportunities for advancement not possible in Poland, but only if they integrated into the predominantly Slavic society. These backgrounds shaped responses during the Holocaust. Grodno Jews deported to concentration camps acted in continuity with prewar social behaviors by forming bonds with other prisoners. Young survivors among Vitebsk's Jews often looked to survive by posing under false identities as Belarusians, Russians, or Tatars. Tapping archival resources in six languages, Borderland Generation offers an original and groundbreaking exploration of the ways in which young Polish and Soviet Jews fought for survival and the complex impulses that shaped their varying methods.

Under the legal and administrative system of Nazi Germany, people categorized as Fremdvölkische (literally, "foreign people") were subject to special laws that restricted their rights, limited their protection under the law, and exposed them to extraordinary legal sanctions and brutal, extralegal police actions. These special laws, one of the central constitutional principles of the Third Reich, applied to anyone perceived as different or racially inferior, whether German citizens or not. "Non-Germans" under the Third Reich traces the establishment and evolution of these laws from the beginnings of the Third Reich through the administration of annexed and occupied eastern territories during the war. Drawing extensively on German archival sources as well as on previously unexplored material from Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe, the book shows with chilling detail how the National Socialist government maintained a superficial legal continuity with the Weimar Republic while expanding the legal definition of Fremdvölkische, to untimately give itself legal sanction for the actions undertaken in the Holocaust. Replete with revealing quotations from secret decrees, instructions, orders, and reports, this major work of scholarship offers a sobering assessment of the theory and practice of law in Nazi Germany. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In June 2017, the Jews of Libya commemorated the jubilee of their complete exodus from this North African land in 1967, which began with a mass migration to Israel in 1948–49. Jews had resided in Libya since Phoenician times, seventeen centuries before their encounter with the Arab conquest in AD 644–646. Their disappearance from Libya, like most other Jewish communities in North Africa and the Middle East, led to their fragmentation across the globe as well as reconstitution in two major centers, Israel and Italy. Distinctive Libyan Jewish traditions and a broad cultural heritage have survived and prospered in different places in Israel and in Rome, Italy, where Libyan Jews are recognized for their vibrant contribution to Italian Jewry. Nevertheless, with the passage of time, memories fade among the younger generations and multiple identities begin to overshadow those inherited over the centuries. Capturing the essence of Libyan Jewish cultural heritage, this anthology aims to reawaken and preserve the memories of this community. Jewish Libya collects the work of scholars who explore the community's history, its literature and dialect, topography and cuisine, and the difficult negotiation of trauma and memory. In shedding new light on this now-fragmented culture and society, this collection commemorates and celebrates vital elements of Libyan Jewish heritage and encourages a lively intergenerational exchange among the many Jews of Libyan origin worldwide.

During his more than fifty-year writing career, American Jewish philosopher Horace Kallen (1882-1974) incorporated a deep focus on science into his pragmatic philosophy of life. He exemplified the hope among Jews that science would pave the way to full and equal integration. In this intellectual biography, Kaufman explores Kallen's life and illumines how American scientific culture inspired not only Kallen's thought but that of an entire generation. Kaufman reveals the ways in which Kallen shaped the direction of discussions on race, ethnicity, modernism, and secularism that influenced the entire American Jewish community. An ardent secularist, Kallen was also a serious religious thinker whose Jewish identity, as unique and idiosyncratic as it was, exemplifies the modern responsiveness to the moral ideal of "authenticity." Kaufman shows how one man's quest for authenticity contributed to a gradual shift in Jewish self-perception in America and how, in turn, his struggle led to America's embrace of Kallen's well-known term "cultural pluralism."

The autobiography of Morris Riskind, Jewish store owner in multicultural Eagle Pass, Texas.

This is the story of a crushingly ordinary man who had the misfortune to live in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. The son of a baptized Jewish father and a Protestant mother, Willy Wiemokli (1908–1983) was declared a half-Jew by the laws of the Third Reich, and because of this, he and his father were briefly interned in Buchenwald. Although his father was eventually executed in Auschwitz in 1943, Willy went on to become an accountant for J. A. Topf & Söhne, the manufacturer of the ovens used in the death of his father as well as thousands of others in concentration camps. Persecuted by the Nazis, he also participated, minimally, in the Nazi-led genocide. This paradox and Willy's liminal status gives his fascinating biography historical significance, adding a new dimension to our understanding of what the Nazi race policies meant to ordinary Germans. In this brief telling of an otherwise average man's life, Schüle and Sowade reveal the pervasive and long-term effect of the race laws. Based solely on archival records, Willy's story gives insight into the muddled and impossible choices of vulnerable individuals living under the Third Reich and the blurred boundaries between victim, bystander, and accomplice.

Originally published in 1997, Bacskai's powerful ethnography portrays the political, religious, and individual forces that came to bear on the Orthodox Jewish tradition as it struggled for survival in the aftermath of the Holocaust in Hungary. Jews who returned to their homes eagerly reestablished their close-knit community lives. However, they were greeted with hostility and faced daily prejudice. Following the fall of Hungarian democracy, the number of Orthodox Jewish congregations dramatically decreased. Those who remained struggled to combat antisemitism and antizionism. It is these individuals, the bearers of the Orthodox Jewish tradition, whom Bacskai celebrates and gives voice to in One Step toward Jerusalem. Through detailed interviews and intimate profiles, Bacskai narrates the individual stories of survival and the collective story of Jews struggling to maintain a community despite significant resistance.

Norm Shulman's relationship with his stepson Greg Levenson had always been stable and warm, but it altered when Greg decided to enlist in the Air Force at age 27. This unexpected decision brought them even closer together, and Norm came to realize that his whole family history had much support to offer Greg. Cognizant of past anti-Semitic stereotypes persisting about Jewish participation in the military, Norm wanted to help prepare Greg to feel comfortable in his own identity. So, Norm decided to write letters that connected Greg to the many Jewish military heroes who had preceded him. From Judah Maccabee to fighter pilots from today's recent history, these profiles in courage and heroism brought Greg foundation and strength, and they offer readers a breadth of knowledge from every corner of Jewish history. Norm's letters to Greg make up one core of “Love, Norm”, the other is Norm's own multigenerational story of Jewish military heroes. As the son of Jewish immigrants whose place in America was hard-won, Norm chronicles what it was like to feel his identity pulled in different directions and how to hold fast to it, nonetheless. “Love, Norm” is a multifaceted retelling of inspirational profiles of famous Jewish fighters from across history, and it is also the singular story of how one man dug into his own past and found pieces to preserve his Jewish identity. Together, empathetically channeled through his heartfelt letters and remembrances, Love, Norm shares a collected wisdom with the next generation.