Overview

Lives Reclaimed tells an extraordinary story of resistance against the Nazi regime and help for Jews in the Third Reich. Still largely unknown today, 'The Bund' were a small left-wing group based in Germany's industrial heartland. Initially preoccupied with surviving the Nazi onslaught and adapting to clandestine life under a dictatorship, in 1938 the men and women of the Bund were shocked by the anti-Jewish violence of Kristallnacht into reaching out to their Jewish neighbours. Using an unparalleled trove of previously undiscovered private papers, Mark Roseman places support for Jews under the shadow of Nazism in a completely new light, exploring the striking palette of gestures and actions that proved possible even in Nazi Germany - from simple symbolic acts of solidarity, through sending parcels to the Polish ghettos and Theresienstadt, to providing false identities and hiding people on the run. In doing so, he uncovers the challenges of living and acting under a dictatorship when neighbours and acquaintances might be as great a threat as the Gestapo, and examines the experiences of those assisted by the group, as they hid in plain sight, moving from address to address. Throughout, we are prompted to ask what drove and equipped the Bund to step into the broken glass of Kristallnacht, to visit Jewish organizations and Jewish barracks to ascertain local needs, to line up in the post-office with packages for Theresienstadt, or to brave a visit to the cells in a local police station with a message for imprisoned Jews? Although not the first book to tell the story of Jews saved from Nazi persecution, the story of the Bund is unique in the way it is able to pursue the choices, dilemmas, fears, and hopes of the helpers themselves, observing them through the changing conditions of both war and Holocaust.

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9780198802846

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Reviews

Roseman is the first historian to tell the story of the Bund, a communitarian group whose ethical radar remained intact during the Nazi era. Insightful, engagingly written, and scrupulously researched, this important book illuminates both the terror that a small, disproportionately female opposition group faced and its success in saving lives. * Marion Kaplan, author of Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany * Captivating. This is a book for our turbulent times: a story of compassion and resistance and a call to courage and solidarity. * Johanna Bourke, author of Fear: A Cultural History * Once again, Roseman has written a pioneering work that changes our vision of life under the Hitler dictatorship. * V.R. Berghahn, author of Journalists between Hitler and Adenauer * In this remarkable reconstruction of a hitherto unknown resistance group, Mark Roseman tells the gripping story of ordinary Germans who did their utmost to assist Jews and dissidents targeted by the Nazi regime. Motivated by ethical principles and believing they could change society for the better, their story serves as a model of moral political conduct for our own turbulent era. * Susannah Heschel, author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus * Compelling reading. We have come to think of tales of rescue from Nazi persecution as being about extraordinary individuals. Mark Roseman brings us a very different kind of story-of a small and deeply interconnected group of ethical socialists in Germany who supported each other and the Jews they hid. By showing how the dynamics within small groups can make an enormous difference, Roseman also opens new perspectives on the writing of history. * Nicholas Stargardt, author of The German War: A Nation under Arms * Humanity is fleeting and unpredictable, but it can be rendered, with patience and skill, into history, and thereby become exemplary. This is what Mark Roseman has done, and his readers will be grateful. * Timothy D. Snyder, author of Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin * Mark Roseman's Lives Reclaimed is a landmark book in the history of Holocaust rescue for several reasons: it illuminates a virtually unknown group of quirky utopian socialists who transformed themselves into a network of German rescuers, its source base is composed primarily of rare contemporary documents and only secondarily of post-war accounts, and it is a story brilliantly researched and exceptionally well-told. * Christopher R. Browning, author of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland * Fascinating study ... Roseman's book is a brilliant, humane, and timely study. It brings both individual Bundists and also a whole period vividly to life. * Alun David, The Jewish Chronicle *

Roseman is the first historian to tell the story of the Bund, a communitarian group whose ethical radar remained intact during the Nazi era. Insightful, engagingly written, and scrupulously researched, this important book illuminates both the terror that a small, disproportionately female opposition group faced and its success in saving lives. * Marion Kaplan, author of Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany * Captivating. This is a book for our turbulent times: a story of compassion and resistance and a call to courage and solidarity. * Johanna Bourke, author of Fear: A Cultural History * Once again, Roseman has written a pioneering work that changes our vision of life under the Hitler dictatorship. * V.R. Berghahn, author of Journalists between Hitler and Adenauer * In this remarkable reconstruction of a hitherto unknown resistance group, Mark Roseman tells the gripping story of ordinary Germans who did their utmost to assist Jews and dissidents targeted by the Nazi regime. Motivated by ethical principles and believing they could change society for the better, their story serves as a model of moral political conduct for our own turbulent era. * Susannah Heschel, author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus * Compelling reading. We have come to think of tales of rescue from Nazi persecution as being about extraordinary individuals. Mark Roseman brings us a very different kind of story-of a small and deeply interconnected group of ethical socialists in Germany who supported each other and the Jews they hid. By showing how the dynamics within small groups can make an enormous difference, Roseman also opens new perspectives on the writing of history. * Nicholas Stargardt, author of The German War: A Nation under Arms * Humanity is fleeting and unpredictable, but it can be rendered, with patience and skill, into history, and thereby become exemplary. This is what Mark Roseman has done, and his readers will be grateful. * Timothy D. Snyder, author of Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin * Mark Roseman's Lives Reclaimed is a landmark book in the history of Holocaust rescue for several reasons: it illuminates a virtually unknown group of quirky utopian socialists who transformed themselves into a network of German rescuers, its source base is composed primarily of rare contemporary documents and only secondarily of post-war accounts, and it is a story brilliantly researched and exceptionally well-told. * Christopher R. Browning, author of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland *

Author Information

Mark Roseman was born in London and educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Warwick. After holding various academic posts, including a professorship at the University of Southampton, he moved to the US to take up the Pat M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies at Indiana University in 2004. Since 2013 he has been Director of the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. In 2018 he was named Distinguished Professor. He has published widely on modern European history and the Holocaust, and is best known for his books A Past in Hiding (2001) and The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution (2002). He is the recipient of a number of prestigious prizes, including one of Germany's foremost literary prizes, the Geschwister Scholl prize, awarded for the German version of A Past in Hiding.

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