Berlin Ghetto: Herbert Baum and the Anti-Fascist Resistance

With a foreword by Elie Wiesel, the first book to tell the complete story of Herbert Baum and the Jewish antifascist resistance in Nazi Berlin

 

This fascinating book tells the story of a group of young Jewish people who had lives filled with intellectual exploration, intense friendships and romances, and dangerous and illegal political action, during one of the most anti-Semitic and regressive regimes in history. The roots of Jewish antifascism in the Communist, Socialist, and Jewish youth movements of pre-Nazi working class Berlin are examined in this book. The complete story of Herbert Baum and Jewish antifascism is told through oral and written testimony of survivors, friends, and relatives of group members; Nazi trial documents; and primary documents of the period. Everything fell apart in May of 1942, however, when Baum and a few others went into the massive anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda exhibition Das Sowjet-Paradies (Soviet Paradise) and set off several small explosive devices. Unfortunately, a comrade of Baum's was interrogated by the Gestapo and under duress gave them a list of names of many people associated with Herbert Baum. Little by little, people were arrested, put on trial and executed or sent to death camps. This book is a testament to Jewish antifascist resistance in Nazi Germany.