Resisters

Starred review from July 28, 2023

Gruner (Jewish studies, Univ. of Southern California; The Greater German Reich and the Jews) writes about German and Austrian Jews, many culturally rather than religiously Jewish, who were initially baffled by their government's inability to recognize Jewish national patriotism as it imposed the oppressive Nuremberg Laws. That's all while, not without a little irony, decorating the chests of Jewish soldiers who had demonstrated battlefield heroism in World War I. Some Jews disguised themselves to attend Nazi youth meetings, where they hoped to gather information about coming deportations and pogroms. Informal networks forged documents and provided avenues for escape. Ultimately, they risked their own lives by remaining in place, Gruner argues. For most resisters, whether acting alone or in concert with clandestine movements, anonymity was their best protection--but one that makes uncovering evidence of such resistance difficult. Those who have shared these stories insist, however, that it was the camp survivors who were the true heroes. VERDICT Evidence of the power of the powerless. These are the stories that longtime readers of Holocaust literature have been waiting to read: evidence of small, covert acts of resistance (often by individuals working on their own initiative) against a fanatically coordinated genocidal force.--Sandra Collins

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