Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust

Rebecca Boehling is Professor of History and Director of the Dresher Center for the Humanities at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Uta Larkey is Associate Professor of German Studies at Goucher College, Baltimore.

• 1. Introduction; 2. German-Jewish lives from Emancipation through the Weimar Republic; 3. Losing one's business and citizenship: the Geschwister Kaufmann, 1933–1938; 4. Professional roadblocks and personal detours: Lotti and Marianne, 1933–1938; 5. The November Pogrom (1938) and its consequences for Kurt and his family; 6. New beginnings in Palestine, 1935–1939: Lotti and Kurt; 7. Rescuing loved ones trapped in Nazi Germany, 1939–1942; 8. Wartime rumors and postwar revelations; 9. Epilogue.

'Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust offers a richly-textured account of the Kaufmann-Steinberg family during the Second World War. Expertly illuminated by Rebecca Boehling and Uta Larkey, it is based on an extraordinarily full set of correspondence between family members with diverse perspectives. Among the many strengths of this superb study is the extent to which it challenges persistent notions concerning gender roles, relations with non-Jewish Germans, and attitudes toward traditional Judaism within German Jewry.' Michael Berkowitz, author of The Crime of My Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality