In the Shadow of the Holocaust

The ""Halbjuden"" of Hitler's Germany were half Christian and half Jewish, but, like the rest of the ""Mischlinge"" (or ""partial-Jews""), were far too Jewish in the eyes of the Nazis. Thus, while they were allowed for a time to coexist with the rest of German society, they were granted only the most marginal or menial jobs, restricted from marrying Aryans or even leading normal social lives, and sent eventually to forced-labour and concentration camps. More than 70,000 Germans were subjected to these restrictions and indignities, created and fostered by Hitler's morally bankrupt race laws, yet few personal accounts of their experiences exist. In this title, James Tent recounts how these men and women from all over Germany and from all walks of life struggled to survive in an increasingly hostile society, even as their Jewish relatives were disappearing into the East. He draws on extensive interviews with 20 survivors, many of whom were teenagers when Hitler came to power, to show how ""half Jews"" coped with conditions on a day-to-day basis and how the legacy of the hatred they suffered has forever lingered in their minds. Tent provides stories of life beneath the boot-heel of Nazi rule: a woman deemed unsuitable for a career in nursing because the shape of her earlobes and breasts indicated she was not ""racially suited"", a man arrested for ""race defilement"" because he lived with an Aryan woman, and many others. He shows how Nazi discrimination and persecution affected their lives and how such treatment intensified through the later years of the war. Tent's witnesses share experiences in school and problems in the workplace, where the best survival strategy was to find an unobtrusive niche in a nondescript job. They tell of obstacles to personal relationships and they soberly remind us that by 1944 they too were rounded up for forced labour, certain to be the next victims of Nazi genocide. This text demonstrates the lengths to which the Nazis were willing to go in order to eradicate Judaism - a fanaticism that increased over time and even in the face of impending military defeat. The ""Halbjuden"" mostly survived the Holocaust, yet they paid for their re-assimilation into German society by remaining silent in the face of haunting memories. This book breaks that silence and is a testament to human endurance under the most trying circumstances.