Subtitle: "Why the democracies could not have saved more Jews from the Nazis".
Mr. Rubinstein's thesis is simple. That Hitler's mania about the Jews grew greater as his persecution proceeded. A great percentage (78%) of German Jews escaped from Germany. Up to mid‑1939, the persecution was a brutal harassment. With the onset of the war, it evolved into genocide, as Jews ‑ many of whom were refugees from Germany into territories conquered by the German armies ‑ were trapped and could no longer escape. Hitler expressly forbade emigration, in what the author labels as his frenzy to destroy the "biological" basis of Judaism. The author dismantles various myths as (dangerous) wish‑filled thinking, the imaginings of after the event desires to lay blame other than where it is properly laid: on Hitler's frenzy to destroy. Anti‑ semiticism evolved into genocide. Many, while not sharing it, did not act vigorously enough to contain it, chiefly for failing to recognize it as the mania that it became. Many Jews in Germany expected it to "blow over". Kristallnacht (November 1938) was a determining moment.
Mr. Rubinstein's thesis is simple. That Hitler's mania about the Jews grew greater as his persecution proceeded. A great percentage (78%) of German Jews escaped from Germany. Up to mid‑1939, the persecution was a brutal harassment. With the onset of the war, it evolved into genocide, as Jews ‑ many of whom were refugees from Germany into territories conquered by the German armies ‑ were trapped and could no longer escape. Hitler expressly forbade emigration, in what the author labels as his frenzy to destroy the "biological" basis of Judaism. The author dismantles various myths as (dangerous) wish‑filled thinking, the imaginings of after the event desires to lay blame other than where it is properly laid: on Hitler's frenzy to destroy. Anti‑ semiticism evolved into genocide. Many, while not sharing it, did not act vigorously enough to contain it, chiefly for failing to recognize it as the mania that it became. Many Jews in Germany expected it to "blow over". Kristallnacht (November 1938) was a determining moment.
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