Jewish Responses to Persecution: 1933–1938

Jürgen Matthäus is research director at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.Mark Roseman is professor in the Department of History and Pat M. Glazier Chair of the Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington.

This is an exceptionally well researched volume. . . . Any reader seeking a glimpse of the mindset of German Jewry in the years leading up to the Final Solution will find the rich array of documents and correspondence in this volume to be of great interest. The authors, both distinguished Holocaust scholars, have made a major contribution to the field with the release of this painstakingly researched work. The documents and correspondence are assembled in a well-organized manner beginning with the rise of Nazism and ending with Kristallnacht and its consequences. The authors provide valuable context and explanation before and after the document entries. Each reader will bring their own specific interest to this reference work and use a given document or series of documents in support of a particular perspective on the evolution of the Shoah. . . . Jewish Responses to Persecution provides powerful examples of denial and rationalization as defenses in the face of overt hatred, acts of violence and recurrent threats of genocide in the years 1933 to 1938. . . . This book is laudable as a scholarly addition to the documentary history of the Holocaust as well as an unintended and tragic reminder of the mortal dangers that stem from a disbelieving, defenseless, and unarmed Jewish population facing genocidal anti-Semitism.

• Volume Introduction: Jews and Other Germans before and after 1933Part I: The Battles of 1933Chapter 1: Confronting the Nazi RevolutionChapter 2: Exclusion and IntrospectionChapter 3: Strategies for SurvivalPart II: Feeling One's Way: January 1934 to August 1935Chapter 4: Stretching the Limits of InfluenceChapter 5: Everyday Life in an Era of UncertaintyChapter 6: Segregation and Exclusion: Spring and Summer 1935Part III: Subjects Under Siege: September 1935 to December 1937Chapter 7: The Nuremberg Laws and Their ImpactChapter 8: Bonds and Breaks with GermanyChapter 9: Jewish Questions after NurembergPart IV: Dispossession and Disappearance: 1938Chapter 10: "Model Austria" and Its RamificationsChapter 11: Évian and the Emigration ImpasseChapter 12: "Kristallnacht" and Its ConsequencesList of DocumentsBibliographyGlossaryChronology