Moshe Zimmermann aims to provide an overview of the distinct fate of German Jews between 1938 and 1945. According to him, in this period their suffering too often gets subsumed into the wider story of the destruction of European Jewry. Zimmermann argues that the experience of German Jews can offer distinct lessons about the processes of discrimination and exclusion in a hitherto liberal society. “[W]e have seen how neighbors were separated into predators and prey merely because ideology, words, and laws can transform people into monsters and vermin . . . [i]t is the apparent recurrence of this dynamic and people's predisposition to criminality that makes this chapter in history so edifying” (215).

Zimmermann sets out to provide an overview of the treatment of Germans by Germans. It is this shared history and citizenship of prosecutors and prosecuted, he insists, which sets this case apart from the persecution of Jews in countries under German occupation. Despite the clear difference that the occupation made for the way non-Jewish and Jewish citizens interacted during the Shoah, integrating some of the insights from studies of collaboration would have offered Zimmermann a framework to identify the specificity of the German case even more clearly.

Zimmermann remains resolutely focused on German Jews and leaves Germany only to the extent that they were forced to do so. In nine mostly chronological chapters, his account moves from the pogrom of November 1938 to the experience and legacy of German Jews in the countries of emigration, here primarily Mandate Palestine and post-independence Israel. Zimmermann is strongest when he describes the daily lives and experiences of German Jews, the ever-tighter restrictions on their actions, the (im)possibility of pushing back against discrimination and also violence, and finally their encounters with ghettos and camps in Eastern Europe. Here the focus of the book bears rich fruit, offering a comprehensive account of the progression of anti-Jewish policies in Germany and German Jews’ experience of these.

While the historiographical discussions Zimmermann engages with along the way offer an instructive history of the trends in secondary literature on the Shoah, they suffer from the fact that the original German edition was published in 2008. For this English edition, Zimmermann has updated some of the chapters with more recent literature, but on occasion his interventions have been superseded by current research. That many of the gaps in the historiography which Zimmermann spotted in 2008 have since been closed, though, attests to his prescience. A slightly more streamlined discussion of historiographical questions, however, would have allowed for a smoother narrative, as would a stronger editorial hand, to avoid some of the jumps and repetitions that creep in. Similarly, the translation occasionally undermines Zimmermann's otherwise nuanced approach, especially with regard to the usage of National Socialist terms. “Miscegenation” is used frequently as a descriptive term without quotation marks, as is “evacuation” to describe the deportation of Jews to occupied eastern Europe, here too adopting a National Socialist term beyond discussions of National Socialist policy itself. Precisely because Zimmermann pays close attention to the experience of German Jews, and the way National Socialist language was meant to both prevent them as well as non-Jewish Germans from too easily understanding what was going on, this seems odd.

The occasionally anecdotal nature of the narrative can pay off in unexpected moments, when the reader profits, for example, from Zimmermann's detailed knowledge of the world of Jewish sports. But at other moments, it also skews the picture, as in his treatment of German Jews, the so-called Yekkes, in Israel, where he focuses on those who managed to rebuild careers quickly, but the many who had to live with lost professional opportunities and in difficult material circumstances do not feature. Here, as in the chapter on the deportations to the occupied East, Zimmermann is particularly interested in the encounter between German and Eastern European Jews, and in deconstructing the stereotypes about the German Jews as naïve in the face of persecution and death. He insists that their “restrained comportment on their way to death was misconstrued as a manifestation of stupidity” (120), when in fact these were attempts to maintain dignity in front of the prosecutors. Even if on occasion Zimmermann comes close to reproducing German Jews’ anti-Eastern European Jewish stereotypes, one would have wanted to have read more about their experience in the camps. Similarly, the reference to German Jews who lived in hiding in Germany benefiting from non-Jewish Germans’ “ignorance of the regime's full collection of anti-Jewish rules” (146) begs for more than just this short mention.

Here, as in other places, the book is held back by its dual goal. As a long historiographical essay that contains examples of areas which need more research, the discussions of the existing literature are not quite consistent enough and, as mentioned, are occasionally outdated. For a comprehensive historical overview, the evidence is often too anecdotal, especially in the later chapters, and too frequently disrupted by extended historiographical debates. Thus, overall, this reviewer is left with a mixed impression. The book without doubt is an important addition to the literature on Germany, German Jews, and the Shoah. That it manages to address all three in an integrated manner is no mean feat. For that alone it deserves to be read. At the same time, at least in this English version, it suffers from its long gestation period, a slightly too light editorial hand, and its anecdotal nature. While its strength is the overall arc of the story, the individual chapters are almost better read by themselves, as short insights into specific questions. But perhaps the fact that each chapter can stand for itself, and yet together they add up to an overall argument, is testament to Moshe Zimmermann's writing and the book's strength.