1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910778888603321

Autore

Gay Peter <1923->

Titolo

My German question [[electronic resource] ] : growing up in Nazi Berlin / / Peter Gay

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Haven, : Yale University Press, c1998

ISBN

1-281-73134-X

9786611731342

0-300-13314-6

0-585-34757-3

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

xii, 208 p. : ill

Disciplina

943/.155004924/0092

Soggetti

Jews - Germany - Berlin

National socialism - Germany - Berlin

Jews - Germany - History - 1933-1945

Jews - Persecutions - Germany - Berlin

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Preface -- ONE Return of the Native -- TWO In Training -- THREE The Opium of the Masses -- FOUR Mixed Signals -- FIVE Hormones Awakening -- SIX Survival Strategies -- SEVEN Best-Laid Plans -- EIGHT Buying Asylum -- NINE A Long Silence -- TEN On Good Behavior -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

In this poignant book, a renowned historian tells of his youth as an assimilated, anti-religious Jew in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1939-"the story," says Peter Gay, "of a poisoning and how I dealt with it." With his customary eloquence and analytic acumen, Gay describes his family, the life they led, and the reasons they did not emigrate sooner, and he explores his own ambivalent feelings-then and now-toward Germany and the Germans. Gay relates that the early years of the Nazi regime were relatively benign for his family: as a schoolboy at the Goethe Gymnasium he experienced no ridicule or attacks, his father's business prospered, and most of the family's non-Jewish friends remained supportive. He devised survival strategies-stamp collecting, watching soccer, and the like-that served as screens to block out the increasingly



oppressive world around him. Even before the events of 1938-39, culminating in Kristallnacht, the family was convinced that they must leave the country. Gay describes the bravery and ingenuity of his father in working out this difficult emigration process, the courage of the non-Jewish friends who helped his family during their last bitter months in Germany, and the family's mounting panic as they witnessed the indifference of other countries to their plight and that of others like themselves. Gay's account-marked by candor, modesty, and insight-adds an important and curiously neglected perspective to the history of German Jewry.