Cynthia A. Crane

An interesting collection of oral histories from Christian women of Jewish descent who lived in Germany during the Nazi era. Although these women didn't get the worst of it, they still suffered a great deal: they often couldn't get jobs or finish their education, most of the Jewish side of their families either emigrated or were deported, and there was the very real threat that they themselves could wind up in a concentration camp. There were plenty of Jewish-Christians in the camps and once inside they had to deal with the same horrors as their fully Jewish fellow inmates.

The author did her interviews during the mid-nineties, pretty much just before it was too late. All of these women were old; the youngest were in their seventies and there were some that were in their nineties. I wouldn't be surprised if every one of them has since died. One of the interviewees had suffered from mental/emotional problems for much of her life and committed suicide after her interview.

This is a good collection, though somewhat narrow in scope: the interviewees were all at least in their teens and often fully adult during the Nazi era, and I think all of them remained in Germany after the war. It would have been interesting if men had been included in the study, and also Jewish-Christian people who moved to other countries after the war -- that is, most of them. I think there's got to be something different about the people who chose to stay.… (mehr)