The Holocaust: An Unfinished History, Stone - B+

                       "The ubiquity of collaboration across Europe, driven by a coincidence of wants between the Nazi's ideological driven aspiration to rid the world of Jews and the desire of many nation-states' leaders to create ethnically homogenous populations, means we need to stop thinking of the Holocaust as a solely German project." The ideology of anti-semitism had its apogee in Germany, but it was a "shared framework, a consensus" easily taken up by others. The French, Romanians and Croatians, in particular, embraced the destruction of their Jewish citizens. The majority of the murdered Jews were not killed in death camps, but face to face by gunmen, or starved or worked to death throughout the continent. For the few who survived in Europe, May 1945 did not end their troubles, as they faced pogroms in Hungary and Poland, and were in displaced persons camps for years. "And finally, we need to understand the ways in which the after-effects of the Holocaust shaped the postwar years and continue to be felt today."  This excellent history, thus, is a retelling of the familiar with a broadened context and expanded view of the events of the Shoah.    

                      The Nazis,  particularly Adolf Hitler, viewed the Versailles Diktat and all of the pain and humiliation that followed as having been caused by international Jewry. Thus, anti-semitism became the root of the Nazi creed. There were attempts to dress up Nazi racial theories in scientific robes, but for the true believers, it was never more than pure hatred of the Jews and the adulation of Aryan superiority.  Immediately upon assuming power, the Nazis moved against the Jews, and in the years before the war began, they reduced the prosperous Jewish community to "abject destitution" and "removed them from the majority of the population's sense of obligation, morality, and civility."  The initial boycotts, job losses, and random violence were followed by the Nuremberg Laws, which deprived Jews of German citizenship. They were prohibited from having any sexual relationships with Aryans,  they could not act as a physician to an Aryan, they lost their rights at university, and they began to lose their businesses to Aryanization. All of these actions required the complicit consent of a broad swath of society. Kristallnacht escalated the violence with 177 synagogues burned, thousands of businesses destroyed and 3,000 sent to concentration camps. If any Jew in Germany was unsure of the intentions of the regime, The Night of Broken Glass clarified how matters stood. Tens of thousands more left Germany. By September of 1939, fully half of the country's Jewish population had left since Hitler's rise. 

                   In January 1939, Hitler said - "Today I will be a prophet again and say, if international finance Jewry in and outside Europe succeeds in plunging nations into another world war, then the end result ... will be the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." When Germany invaded Poland, it began the systemic murder of the country's elites and leaders. On occasion, an entire Jewish community would be slaughtered, but most Jews were rounded up and placed in heavily-policed ghettos. Poland's Jews were warehoused in the ghettos with the intent of sending them east of the Urals when the circumstances allowed. Although the ghettos were created well before the decision to murder their inhabitants, conditions were such that 500,000 Polish Jews died in the ghettos.

                Bolshevism in the USSR had to be destroyed because it was through Bolshevism that the Jews were attempting to destroy Germany. "What changed in 1941 was the overall conception of a genocidal plan rather than a more limited policy..." Nazi Germany transitioned from ghettoization to face to face killings in the western USSR, to a continental plan of extermination in a little over a year. The SS Einsatzgruppen who accompanied the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union killed 1.5 million Jews. Between the fall of 1941 and the spring of 1942, Hitler gave the order to implement the Final Solution. In March 1942, 80% of the Holocaust victims were still alive. A year later, 80% were dead. The murders in the USSR were almost all assisted by locals who enthusiastically aided the Germans. Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Byelorussians, and Ukrainians were all handmaidens to the Nazis. To the west in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Greece, and Moldova, "indigenous fascist regimes" were indiscriminately killing Jews. "For the victims of these murderous policies...the result was disastrous. By that point, the Nazi's Final Solution was in place, and Jews across Europe were marked for death. For the different Jewish populations actually to be captured, deported and murdered, however, required a high degree of collaboration across the continent...The precise path of genocide differed from place to place, but in the end the outcome was the same."

                      From Norway to Crete, individuals, organizations, and entire countries collaborated with the Nazis to help rid the continent of Jews. In the Netherlands where 75% of the Jews were killed, the civil service cooperated throughout with the occupiers. The Nazi occupation of Hungary in 1944 which was followed by the deportation of almost half a million Jews to Auschwitz could not have happened without the support of the Hungarian police. Only 25% of France's Jews were deported, but the 1942 internments at the Velodrome and Drancy required extensive local help. Croatia and Slovakia were so fervently anti-semitic that they pre-empted the Germans and began murdering their Jews before the SS became involved. In Romania, Antonescu fully embraced the fascist ideology and killed thousands. "It is clearly the case that without the support of millions of non-Germans (or Austrians) across Europe, the pace of the Holocaust would have been slower and its extent less comprehensive."

                    "In late 1943 and early 1944, the killing rate at Birkenau, as the Nazis realized that placing ideology above labour made little sense now, given the parlous state of the war economy..." Several hundred thousand Jewish lives were saved when they were put into slave labour camps.  Thousands upon thousands received only a deferment as the camps were extremely brutal, inhumane operations. As the Allies closed in, hundreds of thousands died in death marches, as the Nazis attempted to hide their atrocities. For the Jews of Eastern Europe, the end of hostilities offered nothing but uncertainty in DP camps. Their homes and families were no more. They could or would not return to Poland or Hungary. One American observer sent to Europe by the president observed that the Jews were under lock and key in camps and guarded by soldiers. The only difference was that "we do not exterminate them." Although some DP's stayed in Europe, most went to either Israel or America.

                 In the immediate aftermath of the war, "the genocide of the Jews was not understood or was overlooked." The passage of time, particularly the end of the Cold War, brought a Holocaust consciousness to the fore. The key events were Eichmann's trial in 1961-2, the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial in 1963-65, the television show 'The Holocaust' in 1978, 'Schindler's List' in 1993, and the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1995.  In the twenty-first century, the Holocaust's memory has been distorted by those who twist and refute history for their own purposes. The most glaring example is Poland, where it is now a crime to suggest that the Poles betrayed its Jews. The official line in Poland now is that Poles uniformly helped their Jewish neighbors from the Nazis. There are other examples of denial popping up regularly around the world. The author is the Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at the University of London. The two core themes here are the diversity of the methods of killing and the breath of the collaboration throughout the continent.

                       

                                                                            

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, Woo - B+

                       This is the remarkable story of William and Ellen Craft, slaves who traveled to the north and eventually to England in their pursuit of freedom. They became celebrities on the lecture circuit for defying the Fugitive Slave Act. "At heart, this is an American love story-not in the fairy tale sense, but an enduring relationship between a man and a woman, a couple and a country."

                       They departed their home in Macon on the morning of Dec. 20, 1848. Ellen was three-quarters white with light hair and easily passed as a sickly young white man, with an arm in a sling. William had been apprenticed to a carpenter and had managed to save $150. The Savannah train was a short walk from their home. The train pulled away with Ellen in first class and William in the Negro section. They arrived later that day, and embarked on a steamer that evening. The next day in Charleston,  Ellen purchased tickets for herself, as William Johnson, and for her slave for Philadelphia. Another steamer took them to Wilmington, where they boarded a train. The trip north entailed the constant changing of trains, but the journey continued, and they found themselves in the nation's capitol. They headed to the "most dangerous slaveport of their journey," Baltimore, where they had their closest call when an official would not let them proceed until Mr. Johnson could prove his ownership of the slave. Fortunately, an impatient crowd moved all of the passengers forward. On Christmas Eve, they arrived in Philadelphia.

                     They were welcomed by the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, and all marveled at the courage and genius behind their 1,000 mile escape. However, they moved on to Boston, which was considered a safer place because of its distance from the Mason-Dixon Line and the unlikelihood of the Fugitive Slave Act being enforced. They agreed to speak publicly about their experiences as slaves and their journey to freedom. Soon, their story was front page news in the north. They spent the spring of 1849 traveling and lecturing throughout New England. That summer, they settled in Boston's Black community. William opened a furniture repair store and Ellen used her sewing skills as an upholsterer. As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was enhanced leading thousands to leave for Canada. The Crafts decided to stay in Boston. Many in the city said they would never allow the slave catchers to take away their residents, but there were people "from Macon en route to Boston, with Ellen and William in their sights." The slave catchers obtained a warrant from Federal Court, but had difficulty finding help to execute it. Hundreds of Negroes took to the streets with placards lambasting 'Kidnappers and Slave Catchers' in an attempt to thwart the southerners. While people threw eggs at the slave catchers, the local police arrested them three times. Although the people of Boston were doing their all to stop enforcement of the FSA, the federal government took steps to arrest the Crafts. They quickly left for Maine, then sailed to Canada, and were soon on their way to Liverpool.

                    William and Ellen immediately hit the lecture circuit and began to build a normal life in a free society. The lived in the UK for almost two decades and had five children there. Ellen was active in the London Emancipation Committee, the Women's Suffrage Organization, and the British and Foreign Freedmen's Association. In 1860, they published 'Running A Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery.' In 1868, they returned to Georgia. They attempted to start a farm cooperative for freed slaves but it failed after a few years. They lived out their lives in Charleston where Ellen died in 1891 and William in 1900. Although their children and grandchildren lived as successful educators, activists, and lawyers, William and Ellen's story faded away. But their escape and activism is an extraordinary story. "They pushed not only themselves and each other, but also the nation - and the world - to reach for better." The book is good --the Craft's story is extraordinary.

 

The Missing Corpse, Bannalec - B

                      Here, Commissaire Georges Dupin faces a double murder. Both men were from Scotland and in Brittany for the day. As per the course in this series, we are immersed in a unique aspect of life in Brittany, and in this novel it's oyster farming. Add in Druid rites and beach sand theft before Dupin's team wraps up the murderers. To add to his success, he learns from his Breton to the core administrative assistant that his great-grandfather was from Brittany.

All The Queen's Spies, Clements - B

                      It is 1583, and the Queen and Walsingham conspire to exile Dee to the continent where they expect him to travel to Prague and spy on the Emperor Rudolf. It is Rudolf's toleration of non-Catholics that may keep him away from any plans by the French and Spanish to restore Romanism in England. Dee and his party are able to distract the Emperor by appealing to his interests in the occult. Although these books are based in fact and are quite creative, I suspect I will not follow up when the next one is published.

The Mystery Guest, Prose - B

                      Another death at the Regency Grand, and this time Molly the Maid  handed the poisoned tea to the deceased as he began a presentation in the hotel's ballroom. The police once again suspect her, but she brilliantly solves the murder on her own. This series is nice, but not much more.

The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America, Schulman - B

                       This is the story of the German-Jews who came to America in the 19th century and founded some of the country's greatest financial institutions. Almost all of them came here impoverished. Indeed, their empires "were born out of rickety wooden carts and bulging canvas rucksacks." 

                       Eighteen-year-old Joseph Seligman arrived in NY in 1837 with the equivalent of $100 sewed into his trousers. He succeeded as a peddler, brought his siblings to New York, and opened an import business in lower Manhattan. A decade later, Henry, Emmanuel, and Mayer Lehmann opened a dry goods store in Alabama. Lehman Brothers branched into financing the cotton trade. As the country grew, so did both firms. The Seligmans opened a successful business in San Francisco, and the Lehman's opened an office in New York. Both families profited during the Civil War, provisioning and financing both sides. "The Civil War seeded vast fortunes that would grow vaster still in the Gilded Age to come."  Jacob Schiff, son of a wealthy Frankfurt family, arrived in New York in 1865, and within two years opened his own brokerage firm. A month later, Kuhn & Loeb opened.  Marcus Goldman moved to NY from Philadelphia and opened his own financial firm.  After the Panic of 1873 during which Jacob Schiff's firm disbanded, he joined Kuhn Loeb. By the end of the decade, Schiff and Seligman were two of the most prominent financiers on Wall Street. The new Hayes administration turned to both firms to lead the underwriting that would retire most of the country's Civil War debt. At the height of his power and at the age of 60, Joseph Seligman was the first of the German-Jewish titans to die. 

                     Jacob Schiff ascended to Seligman's position as the preeminent Jewish banker in the country. He joined civic boards, was instrumental in integrating NYC  schools, and encouraged the city to focus on underground railways, not elevated lines.  He spent the next forty years as the leading philanthropist of Jewish causes.  In 1881, the Russian Empire began punishing its Jews, falsely blaming them for the assassination of the Tsar. Over the next thirty years, two million would immigrate to America. Schiff marshaled the resources of the Jewish community to assist them.  He orchestrated one of the most encompassing and far-reaching act of private generosity for a broad class of people in American history. 

                   In the 1890's, two members of the Hamburg based banking dynasty M M Warburg married into NY banking families, one to Frieda Schiff and one to Nina Loeb. Otto Kahn married the daughter of a Kuhn Loeb partner as well. The Goldman and Sachs families also combined through marriage. 

                   Jacob Schiff was at the apogee of his career. He and Otto Kahn succeeded in reorganizing the Union Pacific RR, which JP Morgan believed was beyond repair. Jacob's distaste for Russia led him to finance Japan during its war with the Russian Empire. His efforts were so well appreciated that when he went to Japan, he was presented with the Order of the Rising Sun by the Emperor Meiji. The family and firm name still resonate in Japan a century later.  Upon his return to the states, he was faced with increasingly anti-business acts by the Roosevelt administration and the burgeoning Panic of 1907. JP Morgan almost singlehandedly pulled the country out of the crisis, paving the way at long last for the US to establish a central bank seven years later.

                   Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers began to partner together in bringing IPO's to the fore starting with United Cigar and Sears Roebuck, and most successfully with FW Woolworth and Co.

                   As the twentieth century progressed, first under Roosevelt, and then under Wilson, the excesses of the Gilded Age, which had built many Yankee and Jewish fortunes came under attack by the Progressives. Nonetheless, the Wall Streeters collaborated with the government in the creation of the Federal Reserve System and Paul Warburg was the first appointment to the Federal Reserve Board that Wilson made. WWI presented major conflicts for those who still identified as German, particularly Jacob Schiff and Henry Goldman. Czarist Russia on the side of the Allies was a particularly trying point for Schiff, who personally subscribed to loans supporting the German war effort. He also contributed generously to aid for Jews in the Eastern European war zones and in Palestine. As Wall Street began to finance the Allied effort, Schiff's insistence on neutrality hurt both Kuhn Loeb's reputation and profits. The firm fully supported the war after America joined the Allies, but it had lost, and would not recover, its preeminent position as one of the leading American investment banks. Similarly, Henry Goldman hurt his firm by doing business with the Central Powers early in the war. In 1917, Henry withdrew from Goldman Sachs.  Many younger members of the Jewish families worked hard for the war effort;  Herbert Lehman,  Jimmy Warburg, and his cousin Freddy all were commissioned officers stationed stateside. Bobbie Lehman was an officer in France. Members of  the different families were engaged in raising money for Liberty Bonds, and every conceivable relief group imaginable. The fragmented German-Jewish community had, in the end, supported the American effort.

                 "From the first moment of the 1920's an aura of angst and upheaval suffused American life." The US rejected the Versailles Treaty. Anti-semitism was on the rise and was led by one of America's most famous people. Henry Ford published 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' and tried to tarnish Jacob Schiff as the man who brought Bolshevism to Russia by opposing the Czar. The US passed stringent anti-immigration laws because of the influx of Jews and Italians in the early 20th century.  JP Morgan's headquarters were bombed, as was the home of the Attorney-General. The Red Scare ensued. 

                 Jacob Schiff died in September, 1920. Tens of thousands watched his casket travel from the synagogue to the cemetery.  This is an excellent book and it's very enjoyable to know a bit more of the background of the names that have dominated both the financial services world and the city of New York. Jacob Schiff, a name I only learned a few months ago in a different book, was truly an extraordinary man whose generosity was astounding.