Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany

by Mark Roseman

Overview

Lives Reclaimed tells an extraordinary story of resistance against the Nazi regime and help for Jews in the Third Reich. Still largely unknown today, 'The Bund' were a small left-wing group based in Germany's industrial heartland. Initially preoccupied with surviving the Nazi onslaught and adapting to clandestine life under a dictatorship, in 1938 the men and women of the Bund were shocked by the anti-Jewish violence of Kristallnacht into reaching out to their Jewish neighbours.

Using an unparalleled trove of previously undiscovered private papers, Mark Roseman places support for Jews under the shadow of Nazism in a completely new light, exploring the striking palette of gestures and actions that proved possible even in Nazi Germany - from simple symbolic acts of solidarity, through sending parcels to the Polish ghettos and Theresienstadt, to providing false identities and hiding people on the run. In doing so, he uncovers the challenges of living and acting under a dictatorship when neighbours and acquaintances might be as great a threat as the Gestapo, and examines the experiences of those assisted by the group, as they hid in plain sight, moving from address to address.

Throughout, we are prompted to ask what drove and equipped the Bund to step into the broken glass of Kristallnacht, to visit Jewish organizations and Jewish barracks to ascertain local needs, to line up in the post-office with packages for Theresienstadt, or to brave a visit to the cells in a local police station with a message for imprisoned Jews? Although not the first book to tell the story of Jews saved from Nazi persecution, the story of the Bund is unique in the way it is able to pursue the choices, dilemmas, fears, and hopes of the helpers themselves, observing them through the changing conditions of both war and Holocaust.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781627797870
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/13/2019
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	1,243,134
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Mark Roseman teaches modern history at the University of Southhampton in England and has published widely on many aspects of twentieth-century German history. He is the author of The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution and A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany. He lives in Birmingham, England.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Flowers for the Heinemanns 1

1 Years of Innocence 11

2 The Assault 25

3 From Vanguard to Refuge 38

4 Calls to Arms 55

5 Lifelines 78

6 In Plain Sight 102

7 The Test of Total War 132

8 The Endgame 156

9 Our Flock Has Grown Lonely 176

10 Beyond Recognition 202

Conclusion: The Rescue of History 226

Sources 243

Abbreviations 261

Notes 263

Acknowledgments 317

Index 321

Editorial Reviews

2019-06-17
A new history of the Bund, an "idealistic group of Germans who, in a small way, did something remarkable."

After the fall of the Third Reich, many Germans zealously asserted that they had never sympathized with the fascist regime; indeed, there were those few who truly resisted the scourge and even tried to rescue its victims. This history chronicles the significant contributions of one group, the Bund. Roseman (Director, Jewish Studies/Indiana Univ., The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution, 2002, etc.), an award-winning historian of Nazi Germany, tells of a small group of leftist idealists that was established in the days of the Weimar Republic to improve humanity with lectures, exercise, pamphlets, and dance performances. Called simply the Bund, its "inspirational leader" was Artur Jacobs, who possessed "boundless optimism and self-confidence." He was not Jewish, but his wife was. After the mob outrages against German Jews on Kristallnacht, members of the Bund, even under the watchful eyes of the brown-shirted offenders, offered succor and sympathy, fruit and flowers to those eventually headed to the concentration camps. They also supplied lifesaving Bund houses for some Jews. Providing help was exceedingly difficult. Relatives of some of the group's adherents were in the Wehrmacht, there were constant and devastating air raids in the Ruhr homeland of the Bund, and rations were scarce. Not surprisingly, after the Allied victory in Europe, when reparations became available to proven victims of the Third Reich, Bundists, including Jacobs, lined up. Recounting their considerable trials, many, including Jacobs, exaggerated their wartime exploits and their suffering. With meticulous research into personal papers and other primary material, Roseman provides a singular footnote to the story of life in Hitler's Germany. Reflecting on the story of the Bund, readers may ask again: "What would I have done?"

A welcome addition to the literature of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany.

Kirkus Reviews

"Illuminating . . . insightful . . . Immersed in a rich historiography, Roseman also manages to make a significant contribution to our understanding of the complexities of life under Nazism and of reckoning with the past thereafter."
—Times Literary Supplement

"Startling . . . Liberating . . . Rather than looking for extraordinary, almost saint-like people who do good out of awe-inspiring altruism, Roseman suggests, we should look to networks of people who did good things from complicated motives . . . The most consequential book I’ve read this year."
—Dorian Stuber, Eiger, Mönch, & Jungfrau

“Mark Roseman’s Lives Reclaimed is a landmark book in the history of Holocaust rescue for several reasons: it illuminates a virtually unknown group of quirky utopian socialists who transformed themselves into a network of German rescuers, its source base is composed primarily of rare contemporary documents and only secondarily of postwar accounts, and it is a story brilliantly researched and exceptionally well-told.”
—Christopher R. Browning, author of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

“Humanity is fleeting and unpredictable, but it can be rendered, with patience and skill, into history, and thereby become exemplary. This is what Mark Roseman has done, and his readers will be grateful."
—Timothy D. Snyder, author of Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin

“Compelling reading. We have come to think of tales of rescue from Nazi persecution as being about extraordinary individuals. Mark Roseman brings us a very different kind of story—of a small and deeply interconnected group of ethical socialists in Germany who supported each other and the Jews they hid. By showing how the dynamics within small groups can make an enormous difference, Roseman also opens new perspectives on the writing of history.”
—Nicholas Stargardt, author of The German War: A Nation under Arms

“In this remarkable reconstruction of a hitherto unknown resistance group, Mark Roseman tells the gripping story of ordinary Germans who did their utmost to assist Jews and dissidents targeted by the Nazi regime. Motivated by ethical principles and believing they could change society for the better, their story serves as a model of moral political conduct for our own turbulent era.”
—Susannah Heschel, author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus

“Once again, Roseman has written a pioneering work that changes our vision of life under the Hitler dictatorship.”
—V.R. Berghahn, author of Journalists between Hitler and Adenauer

“Captivating. This is a book for our turbulent times: a story of compassion and resistance and a call to courage and solidarity."
—Johanna Bourke, author of Fear: A Cultural History

“Roseman is the first historian to tell the story of the Bund, a communitarian group whose ethical radar remained intact during the Nazi era. Insightful, engagingly written, and scrupulously researched, this important book illuminates both the terror that a small, disproportionately female opposition group faced and its success in saving lives.”
—Marion Kaplan, author of Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

From the Publisher

★ 07/01/2019

Roseman (Distinguished Professor, Pat M Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies, Indiana Univ.; A Past in Hiding) relates here the stories of individuals who organized themselves into a Bund, a commune focusing on self-improvement, in Weimar Germany. Their intent was to help create a German society based on socialism. With the Nazi takeover of Germany, the Bund found itself on the other side of the divide, and as the situation became more precarious each day their goals changed. Kristallnacht members began to organize efforts to help their Jewish and non-Jewish neighbors, providing safe houses, securing false documents, sending parcels to prisoners in the concentration camp Theresienstadt, and mailing letters to people outside of Germany. This history also touches on the motives of rescuers and the postwar lives of Bund members. VERDICT Through extensive use of primary source material, including some in private collections, and interviews with members of the Bund, Roseman writes a gripping narrative documenting the lives of the people who helped others and those who benefited from their actions. Highly recommended.—Jacqueline Parascandola, Univ. of Pennsylvania

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