RESISTING PERSECUTION
Studies in Contemporary European History
Editors:
Konrad Jarausch, Lurcy Professor of European Civilization, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Henry Rousso, Senior Research Fellow at the Institut dhistoire du temps prsent (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris)
Recent volumes:
Volume 24
Resisting Persecution: Jews and Their Petitions during the Holocaust
Edited by Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner
Volume 23
Peace at All Costs: Catholic Intellectuals, Journalists, and Media in Postwar PolishGerman Reconciliation
Annika Elisabet Frieberg
Volume 22
From Eastern Bloc to European Union: Comparative Processes of Transformation since 1990
Edited by Gnther Heydemann and Karel Vodika
Volume 21
Migration, Memory, and Diversity: Germany from 1945 to the Present
Edited by Cornelia Wilhelm
Volume 20
Ambassadors of Realpolitik: Sweden, the CSCE and the Cold War
Aryo Makko
Volume 19
Wartime Captivity in the 20th Century: Archives, Stories, Memories
Edited by Anne-Marie Path and Fabien Thofilakis
Volume 18
Whose Memory? Which Future? Remembering Ethnic Cleansing and Lost Cultural Diversity in East, Central and Southeastern Europe
Edited by Barbara Trnquist-Plewa
Volume 17
The Long Aftermath: Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 19362016
Edited by Manuel Bragana and Peter Tame
Volume 16
Memory and Change in Europe: Eastern Perspectives
Edited by Magorzata Pakier and Joanna Wawrzyniak
Volume 15
Tailoring Truth: Politicizing the Past and Negotiating Memory in East Germany, 19451990
Jon Berndt Olsen
For a full volume listing, please see the series page on our website:http://berghahnbooks.com/series/contemporary-european-history
RESISTING PERSECUTION
Jews and Their Petitions during the Holocaust
Edited by
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner
First published in 2020 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
2020 Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A C.I.P. cataloging record is available
from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Cataloging in
Publication Control Number:
2020937020
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78920-720-0 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78920-721-7 ebook
CONTENTS
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner
Chapter 1
To Not Live as a Pariah: Jewish Petitions as Individual and Collective Protest in the Greater German Reich
Wolf Gruner
Chapter 2
Did We Not Shed Our Blood for France? Identity and Resistance in Entreaties for the Jewish Internees of Occupied France, 194044
Stacy Renee Veeder
Chapter 3
Honorary Czechs and Germans: Petitions for Aryan Status in the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Benjamin Frommer
Chapter 4
Legal Resistance through Petitions during the Holocaust: The Strategies of Romanian Jewish Leader Wilhelm Filderman, 194044
tefan Cristian Ionescu
Chapter 5
Attempts to Take Action in a Coerced Community: Petitions to the Jewish Council in the d Ghetto during World War II
Svenja Bethke
Chapter 6
Petitioning Matters: Jews and Non-Jews Negotiating Ghettoization in Budapest, 1944
Tim Cole
Chapter 7
Global Jewish Petitioning and the Reconsideration of Spatial Analysis in Holocaust Historiography: The Case of Rescue in the Philippines
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan
Chapter 8
Petitioning for Equal Treatment: The Struggles of Intermarried Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany
Maximilian Strnad
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner
Appendix
European-Jewish Petitions during the Holocaust
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The idea for this book came out of a conversation between the co-editors in 2014. At the time, we both agreed on the importance of exploring petitions as tools of contestation and enlisting a range of scholars with expertise in different European countries and languages. As one of many next steps, we organized a panel at the 2015 annual meeting of the Association for Jewish Studies in Boston to test this volumes approach. Marion A. Kaplan expertly chaired this panel and offered valuable advice. With the title Rethinking Jewish Petitions during the Holocaust: Toward Integrated Histories of Collective and Individual Acts of Contestation, our panel prompted a lively discussion and raised new questions. We were pleased and grateful to the scholarssome long-time colleagues and friends, others new collaboratorswho responded to our subsequent call for essays for this volume.
Over the years, one or both of the editors discussed the topic of Jewish petitioning with many colleagues in North America, Europe, and Israel, who offered advice and constructive criticism. We are particularly grateful to Jacob Borut, Christopher R. Browning, Richard Cohen, Dan Diner, Havi Dreifuss, Luca Fenoglio, Shmuel Feiner, Gaby Finder, Amos Goldberg, Philipp Graf, Atina Grossmann, Konrad Kwiet, Jrgen Matthus, Beate Meyer, Dan Michman, Guy Miron, Dalia Ofer, Eliot Nidam-Orvieto, Iael Nidam-Orvieto, Rene Poznanski, the late Reinhard Rrup, Alan Steinweis, Stefanie Schler-Springorum, Bill Van Norman, Michael Wildt, and Moshe Zimmermann.
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan is indebted to the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem; the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, New York City; and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Bonn, for granting him research fellowships for his work on Jewish petitioning practices. He also wishes to thank the organizers and participants of the research colloquium on the History of National Socialism at the Humboldt University of Berlin, the research colloquium at the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at the Technical University of Berlin, the lunch talk at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and CultureSimon-Dubnow, Leipzig, and the annual lecture of The John Najmann Chair of Holocaust Studies at the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, for excellent opportunities to discuss approaches and arguments used in this volume.