'A sensitive, sophisticated, and rigorous analysis of the linguistic violence that accompanied and enabled the Shoah. Pegelow Kaplan uses a vast and diverse array of sources, from press directives to newspapers, diaries, and interviews with survivors, to reveal how, between 1928 and 1948, laws, institutions, and individuals interacted to produce and sometimes contest the Nazi categories of 'German' and 'Jew'. In the process, he speaks in profound and compelling ways to key questions in the study of the Holocaust, about continuity, antisemitism, 'ordinary Germans' and Jewish resistance. Especially valuable is Pegelow Kaplan's consideration of all Germans of Jewish ancestry and his keen ear for the desperation and ingenuity with which people defined as outsiders and targeted for destruction struggled, using everything they had to save their families, their lives, and their selves.' Doris L. Bergen, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Toronto