Search & Research, Lectures and Papers 24: Barbarians from our "Kulturkreis" - German-Jewish Perceptions of Nazi Perpetrators

This essay seeks to explore German Jews’ understanding of the perpetrators as part of the efforts to write a more integrated history of the Holocaust. The article suggests that the absence of the perpetrators from German Jewish accounts is a result of the trauma they suffered from the violent betrayal by their fellow citizens in the 1930s, which threatened their identity as Germans. The older generations’ experience of exclusion determined what they saw and how they evaluated their antagonists, while chronicles from the death camps were usually written by a younger generation. The article also deals with the experience of Kristallnacht and the ensuing internment of many German Jewish men in the concentration camps, and explores the complex reopening of a dialogue with Germany after the war.