Class of '31: A German-Jewish Émigré's Journey across Defeated Germany

"Class of ’31" is a beautifully written memoir from Walter Jessel, a German Jew determined to answer the question that haunted him since emigrating to the United States in 1938: “Would the people of other nations, if they were placed in the same position as the German during the Hitler regime, behave in the same manner?” Born in 1913 in Frankfurt, Jessel led an extraordinary twentieth-century life on three continents. In 1945, Jessel returned to Germany as an American soldier and sought out...