LAUSR

Jews who survived in hiding within Germany did so with the assistance of dozens of helpers and were dependent on them for shelter, food, medical care, and identification documents. A key influence on this willing commitment to offer assistance were the Bund members in mixed marriages (between so-called Aryans and non-Aryans). But the development of Nazi policies and their impact on privileged and nonprivileged mixed marriages following Kristallnacht in November 1938 are, at times, under-explained. Roseman’s work fits within newer scholarship that is redefining resistance. This scholarship analyzes and contextualizes resistance, i.e., what was possible for different groups of people living in a specific time and place. He provides many examples of group members taking risky actions—from bringing flowers to the home of a Jewish couple the morning followingKristallnacht, to providing assistance to Jews in Germany escaping deportation, to shipping hundreds of parcels to Jews in ghettoes (Theresienstadt) and even in Auschwitz. Roseman also highlights the ways in which early definitions obscured Jewish self-help. Some Jews in hiding or who were passing (assuming an Aryan identity and living in public view) also provided assistance to others in need, acting as survivors, rescuers, and resistors, moving across these categories. For scholars seeking a detailed, historiographical explanation, Roseman provides starting points, laying out key questions in both his introduction (6–9) and his concluding chapter (230–40). This is not a celebration of resistance and rescue in the more common, public sense of heroism. Instead, Roseman’s book stands as a sober reminder that the vast majority of German citizens offered neither resistance to the Third Reich nor assistance to those whom it persecuted. He effectively uses the Bund to raise important questions about how definitions of resistance and rescue emerged in the postwar period, and to deepen scholarly understanding of them today.