TY  - BOOK
PY  - 1995
DA  - 1995//
TI  - Sojourners: the return of German Jews and the question of identity
T3  - Texts and contexts 16
PB  - University of Nebraska Press
CY  - Lincoln [u.a.]
KW  - Jews
KW  - Germany
KW  - Berlin
KW  - Interviews
KW  - Identity
KW  - Jews, German
KW  - Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
KW  - Influence
KW  - History (Europe)
KW  - Berlin (Germany)
KW  - Biography
KW  - Ethnic relations
AB  - This absorbing book of interviews takes one to the heart of modern German Jewish history. Of the eleven German Jews interviewed, four are from West Berlin, and seven are from East Berlin. The interviews provide an exceptionally varied and intimate portrait of Jewish experience in twentieth-century Germany. There are first-hand accounts of the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, the Holocaust, and the divided Germany of the Cold War era. There are also vivid descriptions of the new united Germany, with its alarming resurgence of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Some of the men and women interviewed affirm their dual German and Jewish identities with vigor. There is the West Berliner, for instance, who proclaims, "I am a German Jew. I want to live here." Others describe the impossibility of being both German and Jewish: "I don't have anything in common with the whole German people." Many confess to profound ambivalence, such as the East Berliner who feels that he is neither a native nor a foreigner in Germany: "If someone asks me, 'Who are you?' then I can only say, 'I am a fish out of water.'
SN  - 0803212550
LA  - English
N1  - by John Borneman and Jeffrey M. Peck
ID  - 19026344X
ER  -