Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (Studies in Jewish History)

Kaplan's sensitive narrative, supported by a host of letters, memoirs, and interviews, aims to give a balanced account of German Jewry under the Nazi regime. She convincingly shows how it was German society (indoctrinated by Nazi propaganda) that dealt the first crippling moral blow to the Jewish psyche, before any laws dictated their actions. The Jews succumbed to daily humiliations, ranging from little boys being maliciously teased for being circumcised to older Jews being treated like social pariah's by one-time friends who fell easily into the mindset of racial enmity. Hatred breeds hatred; slowly the German populace strangled the pride of the Jews, creating resentment, distrust and disharmony. Kaplan conveys a poignant, yet subtle message: the fundamental de-facto abandonment of decency and moral civility by the gentile Germans was the catalyst which allowed Nazi leadership to proceed with more aggressive policies that ultimately led to the Holocaust.

Product Description
Between Dignity and Despair draws on the extraordinary memoirs, diaries, interviews, and letters of Jewish women and men to give us the first intimate portrait of Jewish life in Nazi Germany.
Kaplan tells the story of Jews in Germany not from the hindsight of the Holocaust, nor by focusing on the persecutors, but from the bewildered and ambiguous perspective of Jews trying to navigate their daily lives in a world that was becoming more and more insane. Answering the charge that Jews should have left earlier, Kaplan shows that far from seeming inevitable, the Holocaust was impossible to foresee precisely because Nazi repression occurred in irregular and unpredictable steps until the massive violence of Novemer 1938. Then the flow of emigration turned into a torrent, only to be stopped by the war. By that time Jews had been evicted from their homes, robbed of their possessions and their livelihoods, shunned by their former friends, persecuted by their neighbors, and driven into forced labor. For those trapped in Germany, mere survival became a nightmare of increasingly desperate options. Many took their own lives to retain at least some dignity in death; others went underground and endured the fears of nightly bombings and the even greater terror of being discovered by the Nazis. Most were murdered. All were pressed to the limit of human endurance and human loneliness.
Focusing on the fate of families and particularly women's experience, Between Dignity and Despair takes us into the neighborhoods, into the kitchens, shops, and schools, to give us the shape and texture, the very feel of what it was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Kaplan also sought to explain what it felt like to be a Jew living under the Nazi regime and how they became isolated from the rest of the society. She also explained how by and large Germans participated in this persecution and by this she did not mean physical persecution but social persecution.

She gave special attention to the Jewish women and how the women tried to adapt to their new roles and the new situation. The women were able to provide mental and emotional support to their families when their husbands lost their jobs. It was indeed insightful to see how the women were able to cope and how they were the first group to realize the isolation that took place, mainly because of their interaction with neighbors, store owners, public officials, etc.

I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn more about the Jewish life under Nazi Germany and the focus here is not those who suffered under the concentration camps but the "ordinary people" who had to cope with their new situation.


Haunting and painful.   February 20, 2000
 18 out of 20 found this review helpful

Between Dignity and Despair is haunting and painful. The statistics of the Holocaust and "sadistics" of its perpetrators can never capture the true cost in Human terms. History is more than a chronicle and analysis of events. It is also an understanding of the experiences of the people who lived through those events. These experiences do not lend themselves to quantitative assessment and validation. None-the-less, the stories and letters of the people who lived during that time are essential to our interpretation of the geopolitical, military and social events that have shaped our world.

The great question facing us today involves the "collective guilt" of the German people for the persecution and genocide of their Jewish neighbors. The frightening and logical extension of this question is: if such horrors can arise from the children "of the enlightenment," could it not also come from "the sons and daughters of liberty?" It is clear from these accounts that the society as a whole, actively and passively, participated in this process. When studied in Human terms, it is inconceivable that it could have happened any other way.

Cain, after murdering Able, asked of God "Am I my brother's keeper?" The response of the German people to the obvious disenfranchisement, persecution and suffering of the Jews seemed to be: "It depends on your definition of `brother.'" It teaches us that our high and noble beliefs such as equality, liberty, freedom, and brotherly love, are empty words if not applied universally. This lesson was painfully learned in 19th century America when the statement "all Men are created equal" was understood as only applying to those of White, Northern European ancestry.

Between Dignity and Despair is haunting and painful because within its pages we see our own demons and feel the fragility of our own Humanity. We also see to what extreme our quiet personal prejudices can lead us when they go unchecked by the better angels of our nature.

Ms Kaplan has contributed to our understanding of the horrors of systematic psychological terrorism practiced by the Nazis. No revisionist, seeking to absolve German society, can deny the conclusions drawn from the experiences she has documented. Her work is essential to an understanding of the Holocaust.