Robbing the Jews; The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933-1945
New York, N.Y. Cambridge University Press, 2010. First Paperback Edition, Stated. Presumed first printing. Trade paperback. x, 437, [1] pages. Footnotes. Cover has minor wear and soiling. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Includes Acknowledgments, Introduction, and Five black and white photographs. Topics covered include Economic Persecution inside the Third Reich, 1933-1941, and Jewish Property and the European Holocaust, 1939-1945. Also contains Archival Sources and Bibliography, and an Index. Martin C. Dean (born 1962) is a research scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). He formerly worked as an historian at the Metropolitan Police War Crimes Unit, Scotland Yard. Martin Dean served as an expert witness statement for a case against Alfons Götzfrid, who served in the Security Police in Lemberg (Lviv) during World War II and who was tried in Stuttgart in 1999 on charges of accessory to murder at the Majdanek concentration camp. He also assisted in the documentation of a war crimes case against Walter Kehrer from the 1960s and 1970s. Kehrer was born in 1912 in the German Transcaucasian settlement at Helenendorf, moved to Germany in 1930, and became a member of the Nazi party in 1932. He served as an auxiliary with Einsatzgruppe D, with the so-called Caucasian Company, and in the Office of the Commander of the Security Police (KdS) in Lemberg (Lviv). He was accused of atrocities at the Kamionki I, Borki-Wielki, and Lemberg-Janowskastrasse concentration camps. The author explains how the Nazis used a variety of insidious legal mechanisms to steal literally everything from the Jews, to pauperize them and disempower them, and to break their spirits and humiliate them--all in a perfectly legal manner that until now has remained practically invisible and largely neglected by U.S. legal scholars and historians. Robbing the Jews reveals the mechanisms by which the Nazis and their allies confiscated Jewish property; the book demonstrates the close relationship between robbery and the Holocaust. The spoliation evolved in intensifying steps. The Anschluss and Kristallnacht in 1938 reveal a dynamic tension between pressure from below and state-directed measures. In Western Europe, the economic persecution of the Jews took the form of legal decrees and administrative measures. In Eastern Europe, authoritarian governments adopted the Nazi program that excluded Jews from the economy and seized their property, based on indigenous antisemitism and plans for ethnically homogenous nation-states. In the occupied East, property was collected at the killing sites – the most valuable objects were sent to Berlin, whereas items of lesser value supported the local administration and rewarded collaborators. At several key junctures, robbery acted as a catalyst for genocide, accelerating the progression from pogrom to mass murder. Condition: Very good.
Keywords: Holocaust, Confiscation, Jews, Economic Crimes, Emigration, Deportations, Anti-Semitism, Kristallnacht, Taxation, Restitution
ISBN: 9780521129053
[Book #79606]
Price: $37.50