Pages:
427 pages :
,
typewritten and bound manuscript.
Year of publication:
2006
Dissertation note:
The University of Sydney, Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies, June 2006
Keywords:
Jews Persecutions
;
Germany History 1933-1945.
;
Germany Politics and government 1933-1945.
;
Manuscripts.
;
Manuscripts.
Abstract:
This regional study documents the life and the destruction of the Jewish community of Magdeburg, in the Prussian province of Saxony, between 1933 and 1945. As this is the first comprehensive and academic study of this community during the Nazi period, it has contributed to both the regional historiography of German Jewry and the historiography of the Shoah in Germany. In both respects it affords a further understanding of Jewish life in Nazi Germany. Commencing this study at the beginning of 1933 enables a comprehensive view to emerge of the community as it was on the eve of the Nazi assault. The study then analyses the spiralling events that led to its eventual destruction. The story of the Magdeburg Jewish community in both the public and private domains has been explored from the Nazi accession to power in 1933 up until April 1945, when only a handful of Jews in the city witnessed liberation.
Abstract:
This study has combined both archival material and oral history to reconstruct the period. Secondary literature has largely been incorporated and used in a comparative sense and as reference material. This study has interpreted and viewed the period from an essentially Jewish perspective. That is to say, in documenting the experiences of the Jews of Magdeburg, this study has focused almost exclusively on how this population simultaneously lived and grappled with the deteriorating situation. Much attention has been placed on how it reacted and responded at key junctures in the processes of disenfranchisement, exclusion and finally destruction. This discussion also includes how and why Jews reached decisions to abandon their Heimat and what their experiences with departure were. In the final chapter of the community’s story, an exploration has been made of how the majority of those Jews who remained endured the final years of humiliation and stigmatisation. All but a few perished once the implementation of the ‘Final Solution’ reached Magdeburg in April 1942. The epilogue of this study charts the experiences of those who remained in the city, some of whom survived to tell their story.
Note:
A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
,
English
URL:
The dissertation is available via the Sydney eScholarship Repository:
URL:
http://digital.cjh.org/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=641347&custom_att_2=simple_viewer
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