Before the Holocaust three Jewish lives, 1870-1939
Extent and Medium
folders
3
Archival History
Houghton Library
Acquisition
The essays were among those compiled by three Harvard University professors in 1940 in response to a request for papers for a contest entitled, "My life in Germany before and after January 30, 1933." The professors were not the authors of the manuscripts. The essays were translated and compiled by Thomas Dunlap. Dunlap gave the translated essays and some introductory remarks to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on 22 July 1993. They were given to the United States Holocaust Research Institute shortly afterward, and have subsequently been published in book form.
Scope and Content
The memoirs describe the experiences and lives of three German Jews, Käte Frankenthal, Max Moses Polke, and Joseph Benjamin Levy, before and during the Nazi era. Frankenthal's essay describes the hardship of being a Jewish socialist. Polke's memoir describes his life before the Nazis came to power and contrasts it with the effect of the Nuremberg Laws on him. His memoir also describes the conditions in the concentration camp of Buchenwald. Levy's memoir describes such historic events as the Nazi book burning, the Jewish boycott, and Kristallnacht.
People
- Frankenthal, Käte, 1889-1976.
- Levy, J. B. (Josef Benjamin), 1870-
- Polke, Max.
Corporate Bodies
Subjects
- Jews--Legal status, laws, etc.--Germany.
- Boycotts--Germany.
- Jews--Germany.
- Kristallnacht, 1938.
Genre
- Memoirs.
- Document