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Rating: 
Summary: Coming out of hiding.
Review: A Past in Hiding is the story of Marianne Strauss-Ellenbogen and her extraordinary survival during the Holocaust. Presenting us with one young woman's real life story, Roseman does not paint a picture of a saint but that of a real flesh and blood person who, like us all, had great strengths and also weaknesses. She was, after all, in her teens when she was confronted with events too difficult for her to comprehend. She was only a couple of years older than Anne Frank, but what a different reality! Roseman's investigation into Marianne's history engages us deeply in the day-to-day life of herself, her family and friends. We can follow how and why they misjudged the increasingly dangerous environment they lived in. The book has a lot more to offer than that. Given Roseman's extensive knowledge of modern German history, he is able to draw a multi-layered picture of every day life for the Jewish community in Germany during the Nazi period. The investigation into the role of the Abwehr in protecting selected Jewish Germans is pertinent for the recent debate around the complicity of the regular army with the SS and Gestapo. Moving between historical chronology and present day commentary and personal reflection on Marianne, the author pieces together a mosaic like a jigsaw puzzle. For most readers it will shed new light on the complexities of this period in recent history like very few other books I have read. Roseman writes in a style that combines the historical with the intimate personal. He conveys his assessment of the characters and situations with empathy for their situation and struggles. At the time he reflects on discrepancies in their statements and recollections of the past. One of the most dramatic documents in the book is the diary of Marianne's fiancé, Ernst. He was able to smuggle it out of the concentration camp Izbica thanks to an unconventional courier. One of the family acquaintances with probable links to the Gestapo, was nevertheless willing to act as courier for parcels from Marianne to Ernst; he also brought back this very rare contemporary account of life in the camp. Roseman digs into historical records to verify and complement the description. As part of his investigation, he interviewed the courier's widow as well as others who could add to the story. I started reading A Past in Hiding primarily because, as a child growing up after the war, I knew some of the people connected with Marianne and the "Bund". It was Bund members who provided shelter to Marianne while she was on the run from 1943 to 1945, thus risking their own lives and security. The Bund was a small but committed group of humanitarians and socialists who helped numerous victims of the Holocaust. One of the survivors protected by the Bund, Lisa Jacob, became a friend of my family. She influenced my life more than she ever knew and also much more than even I understood for many years while growing up. However, my interest in this extraordinary book grew with each page that I was reading. It was difficult to put down. A Past in Hiding has a lot to offer to the reader. Roseman's research into the life and times of Marianne brought him together with her and her family members as recent as the late 1990s. He also interviewed numerous other "witnesses" of her life and survival during the Nazi period. It was fortuitous that so many family documents as well as official records survived. Roseman studied diaries, correspondence and countless historical documents. His notes and the comprehensive bibliography reflect the thorough research that has gone into the book. As a result, at some level A Past in Hiding reads like a detective story, fully absorbing and dramatic. At another level, it is a very personal and critical account of Marianne and her contemporaries. At a third level, it is a study into the changed memory phenomenon, which can occur as a result of traumatic experiences. Last but not least, Roseman introduces the reader to the almost unknown movement of the "Bund" and their role in supporting victims of the Holocaust. An extraordinary book that should have a place in the mind and heart of many people.
Rating:
Summary: Coming out of hiding.
Review: A Past in Hiding is the story of Marianne Strauss-Ellenbogen and her extraordinary survival during the Holocaust. Presenting us with one young woman's real life story, Roseman does not paint a picture of a saint but that of a real flesh and blood person who, like us all, had great strengths and also weaknesses. She was, after all, in her teens when she was confronted with events too difficult for her to comprehend. She was only a couple of years older than Anne Frank, but what a different reality! Roseman's investigation into Marianne's history engages us deeply in the day-to-day life of herself, her family and friends. We can follow how and why they misjudged the increasingly dangerous environment they lived in. The book has a lot more to offer than that. Given Roseman's extensive knowledge of modern German history, he is able to draw a multi-layered picture of every day life for the Jewish community in Germany during the Nazi period. The investigation into the role of the Abwehr in protecting selected Jewish Germans is pertinent for the recent debate around the complicity of the regular army with the SS and Gestapo. Moving between historical chronology and present day commentary and personal reflection on Marianne, the author pieces together a mosaic like a jigsaw puzzle. For most readers it will shed new light on the complexities of this period in recent history like very few other books I have read. Roseman writes in a style that combines the historical with the intimate personal. He conveys his assessment of the characters and situations with empathy for their situation and struggles. At the time he reflects on discrepancies in their statements and recollections of the past. One of the most dramatic documents in the book is the diary of Marianne's fiancé, Ernst. He was able to smuggle it out of the concentration camp Izbica thanks to an unconventional courier. One of the family acquaintances with probable links to the Gestapo, was nevertheless willing to act as courier for parcels from Marianne to Ernst; he also brought back this very rare contemporary account of life in the camp. Roseman digs into historical records to verify and complement the description. As part of his investigation, he interviewed the courier's widow as well as others who could add to the story. I started reading A Past in Hiding primarily because, as a child growing up after the war, I knew some of the people connected with Marianne and the "Bund". It was Bund members who provided shelter to Marianne while she was on the run from 1943 to 1945, thus risking their own lives and security. The Bund was a small but committed group of humanitarians and socialists who helped numerous victims of the Holocaust. One of the survivors protected by the Bund, Lisa Jacob, became a friend of my family. She influenced my life more than she ever knew and also much more than even I understood for many years while growing up. However, my interest in this extraordinary book grew with each page that I was reading. It was difficult to put down. A Past in Hiding has a lot to offer to the reader. Roseman's research into the life and times of Marianne brought him together with her and her family members as recent as the late 1990s. He also interviewed numerous other "witnesses" of her life and survival during the Nazi period. It was fortuitous that so many family documents as well as official records survived. Roseman studied diaries, correspondence and countless historical documents. His notes and the comprehensive bibliography reflect the thorough research that has gone into the book. As a result, at some level A Past in Hiding reads like a detective story, fully absorbing and dramatic. At another level, it is a very personal and critical account of Marianne and her contemporaries. At a third level, it is a study into the changed memory phenomenon, which can occur as a result of traumatic experiences. Last but not least, Roseman introduces the reader to the almost unknown movement of the "Bund" and their role in supporting victims of the Holocaust. An extraordinary book that should have a place in the mind and heart of many people.
Rating: 
Summary: Mark Roseman knows how to chew a rag to scraps!
Review: Dr. Mark Roseman, a professor at the University of Keele, became fascinated with the case of an elderly Jewess, Marianne Strauss Ellenbogen in Liverpool, England. She was one of the surviving "U-boots", i.e. Jews who lived through the war posing as Germans and somehow never getting rounded up. Her nuclear family was destroyed, and she was left alone to scrounge illegally through the country for two years, 1943-45, at age 20. As a member of the socialist Bund with its high ideals for humanity, she had a large network of nonJewish friends who could house and feed her, give her a child or two to babysit so that it would appear she were employed, and who generally kept her going from place to place as the guest on the couch. Rationing was getting tighter and tighter, so one of her self-appointed duties, in order to help her various hosts, was to go back to her wealthy family's home and other homes where goods had been placed in safekeeping, and take them to the farmers to sell for eggs, butter, bread, anything. She also took scraps of felt and arranged them into new and interesting ladies' hats. This craft she had learned in a Jewish kindergarten teacher training institute in Berlin. There is so much of everyday life packed into this book that I almost could not sleep from being washed over with nostalgia for my two years of backpacking around Europe. Staying with people, helping them babysit, shop, clean up, chatting with them and entertaining them with stories, and at exactly the age she was then, I could almost imagine myself in her situation. I too was such a long time in Germany without legal right to work that I became creative in trying to earn a bit of money here and there. Little details I question, however: why would she before not have been expected to be employed, but as soon as she imposed on friends in her dangerous run from the Nazis, did they insist she appear to be employed? Were Jews not expected to be employed? I think that is not exactly true; most were not wealthy and lived from their labor, not from investments and capital. Secondly, why did she maintain her long, thick, dark and luxuriant braids, just as German girls loved in those years, and which you can see in the first photograph in 1932, when she is still at a German "Luisenschule", but when she transferred over to a Jewish girls' school, she is the ONLY one with braids in the whole class photo. This small detail is to me a telling one. She had an allegiance to Germany and its culture until the end, and had a lot of sympathy for her friends' suffering and losses during the war. For indeed, she lived through it herself, including the terrible bombings of the Ruhrgebiet. Otherwise, hats off to Roseman for digging deep and chewing hard and taking her life seriously!!! Someone should make a movie of her life but film it in Germany, with German kids.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing, if longwinded, detective story
Review: I don't have alot to add to what has already been said about this gripping work. It is an amazing story that draws you in on several levels: as a case study of Jewish life in germany during the Nazi years; as a touching biographical account of an unique woman; as a reseachers detective story; etc. Genealogists might also be interested in the remarkable ways Roseman ferreted out data. Bottom line: a remarkable story, very well told. Roseman is an incredible and tenacious researcher, and a pretty decent writer. It is a work out, and might have been better if condensed by maybe a 100 pages or so. One pet point -- Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's small role in teh narrative comes up a few times. He was a brother-in-law to one of the Wehrmacht generals who wanted Hitler dead and tried to rescue Jews. Bonhoeffer's own story has been told many times -- how he escaped Germany to be a professor in New York, but chose to return to fight Hitler and ended up martyred in a concentration camp. Anyway, Bonhoeffer's name appears in the book more often than the index indicates (see also p. 251, for example), and Roseman never mentions the interesting fact that he was a Lutheran pastor and theologian. Also, poersonally I was longing for more photos as I tried to visualize the cats of characters. Anyway, one of the best things I have read in awhile. Makes Melissa Mueller's bio. of Anne Frank seem dull.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing, if longwinded, detective story
Review: I don't have alot to add to what has already been said about this gripping work. It is an amazing story that draws you in on several levels: as a case study of Jewish life in germany during the Nazi years; as a touching biographical account of an unique woman; as a reseachers detective story; etc. Genealogists might also be interested in the remarkable ways Roseman ferreted out data. Bottom line: a remarkable story, very well told. Roseman is an incredible and tenacious researcher, and a pretty decent writer. It is a work out, and might have been better if condensed by maybe a 100 pages or so. One pet point -- Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's small role in teh narrative comes up a few times. He was a brother-in-law to one of the Wehrmacht generals who wanted Hitler dead and tried to rescue Jews. Bonhoeffer's own story has been told many times -- how he escaped Germany to be a professor in New York, but chose to return to fight Hitler and ended up martyred in a concentration camp. Anyway, Bonhoeffer's name appears in the book more often than the index indicates (see also p. 251, for example), and Roseman never mentions the interesting fact that he was a Lutheran pastor and theologian. Also, poersonally I was longing for more photos as I tried to visualize the cats of characters. Anyway, one of the best things I have read in awhile. Makes Melissa Mueller's bio. of Anne Frank seem dull.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary archives well assembled
Review: More than the focus on Marianne, I came away from this book thinking about Ernest. Marianne's story is better than most fiction in it's ability to illustrate a time and place gone, to breathe life into people we've never met and to serve as a larger parable for the history surrounding her. Ernest has his own place in this narrative. He is a look at the soul of a loving person trying desperatly to remain himself in impossible times. Both people of extreme character, Marianne and Ernest are worth knowing. Far beyond that, is the author's exploration of oral history and the pitfalls it contains. (That alone recommends this book to the casual family historian.) The inadequately documented actions of ordinary Germans of decency is given a boost by Marianne's papers and shines deserved light on many. If you've read several dozen testimonies already, this book still offers a great deal of new information to consider.
Rating:
Summary: U-boat story with a twist
Review: Of all the stories I have read about U-boat Jews, this one surprised me the most. A daughter of privilege, Marianne Strauss watched as little by little her family's position--initially protected by Nazi contacts--and fortune diminished until every avenue of escape was closed. When the SS finally came for her, her parents and brother, she managed to escape and began two+ years of hiding in plain sight, successfully aided by an organization called the Bund (no relation to Kulturbund) as well as her own seemingly limitless daring and resoursefulness. Having survived the war, one of her first tasks was to help disillusioned, emotionally crushed German youth. Shortly thereafter, she was contacted by a British military physician regarding the location of some of her surviving family--and Captain Dr. Basil Ellenbogen soon asked her to marry him. Marianne eventually settled in England with her husband where they raised a son, who later helped author Mark Roseman complete his research for this book after Marianne died in late 1996, and a daughter, who succumbed to anorexia at 18. But what distinguished Marianne from other U-boats was how she came to see herself NOT as a pursued Jew but rather as just another German struggling thru the last days of the war--she never gave herself away because she completely removed the frightened look of the persecuted from her demeanor. She openly did everything forbidden to the Jews--road public transit, ate in restaurants, walked when and where she chose, went to the air raid shelters along with everyone else where she nursed the ill and cared for children, even obtained food rations--all without any official identification papers! Her boldness got her out of some very tight situations when she would laugh and joke with, or confront, as the situation required, Nazis or their citizen sympathizers. She was wary but she never cowered, and thus her "disguise" proved impenetrable. Even after the war and for the rest of her life, she never drew attention to herself as a victim or sought its special status. This is the story of an amazing journey, and well worth the time it will take to read it.
Rating:
Summary: U-boat story with a twist
Review: Of all the stories I have read about U-boat Jews, this one surprised me the most. A daughter of privilege, Marianne Strauss watched as little by little her family's position--initially protected by Nazi contacts--and fortune diminished until every avenue of escape was closed. When the SS finally came for her, her parents and brother, she managed to escape and began two+ years of hiding in plain sight, successfully aided by an organization called the Bund (no relation to Kulturbund) as well as her own seemingly limitless daring and resoursefulness. Having survived the war, one of her first tasks was to help disillusioned, emotionally crushed German youth. Shortly thereafter, she was contacted by a British military physician regarding the location of some of her surviving family--and Captain Dr. Basil Ellenbogen soon asked her to marry him. Marianne eventually settled in England with her husband where they raised a son, who later helped author Mark Roseman complete his research for this book after Marianne died in late 1996, and a daughter, who succumbed to anorexia at 18. But what distinguished Marianne from other U-boats was how she came to see herself NOT as a pursued Jew but rather as just another German struggling thru the last days of the war--she never gave herself away because she completely removed the frightened look of the persecuted from her demeanor. She openly did everything forbidden to the Jews--road public transit, ate in restaurants, walked when and where she chose, went to the air raid shelters along with everyone else where she nursed the ill and cared for children, even obtained food rations--all without any official identification papers! Her boldness got her out of some very tight situations when she would laugh and joke with, or confront, as the situation required, Nazis or their citizen sympathizers. She was wary but she never cowered, and thus her "disguise" proved impenetrable. Even after the war and for the rest of her life, she never drew attention to herself as a victim or sought its special status. This is the story of an amazing journey, and well worth the time it will take to read it.
Rating:
Summary: Poignant Biography of a Holocaust Survivor
Review: Professor Mark Roseman's "A Past in Hiding" is a fascinating, often riveting, scholarly account of Marianne Strauss Ellenbogen's life in Nazi Germany. I suspect that this fine book will be remembered as one of the best written about the Holocaust. Its excellence stems from Roseman's analytic, almost psychological, portrayal of Ms. Ellenbogen's childhood and early adulthood. She comes across as a willful, headstrong person who sought solace more in her identity as a German than as a German Jew while the Nazi extermination of her family, friends, and countless others proceeded at a relentless pace. The book also introduces us to "The Bund", a hitherto unknown socialist anti-Nazi resistance movement based in Essen, Ms. Ellenbogen's birthplace, and describes how its members protected Ms. Ellenbogen during the two years she was in hiding towards the end of the Second World War. Professor Roseman also describes how other Germans, including some loyal Nazis, acted heroically to save Ms. Ellenbogen and to delay for nearly two years the eventual deportation of her family to Nazi concentration camps. We read eventually of her mundane life after the war in Great Britain, married to the Orthodox Jewish doctor who rescued her, keeping her tragic past hidden for decades to both family and friends.
Rating:
Summary: A Past in Hiding by Mark Roseman
Review: This 491 page biography describes the survival of Marianne Strauss, daughter of well-to-do Jews of Essen during the Nazi years. Born in 1923, and with a brother Richard three years younger, Marianne grew up under the antiJewish laws and increasing persecution culminating in Krystalnacht of November 1938. With the outbreak of the war, conditions for Marianne and her family deteriorated rapidly. She escaped deportation by fleeing the house when her parents and brother were rounded up by the Gestapo and sent to Theresienstadt and then Auschwitz. From 1943 to 1945, Marianne lived as a fugitive, helped by a leftwing German organization, the Bund. She was liberated by the American Army in 1945, married a British Army medical officer and made her home in England. Mark Roseman, a professor of modern history at the University of Southampton in England, has created in a vivid way Marianne's life as a "U-boat" in wartime Germany. He has obtained Marianne's letters, private diaries, and archival materials from Essen, Dusseldorf, Yad Vashem and many other sources. He interviewed Marianne many times almost up to her death in 1996 in Liverpool. He also contacted surviving members of her family and friends. The book is distinguished by poignant descriptions of Marianne's feelings, her struggles to deal with the deaths of her fiance Ernst Krombach, murdered by the Nazis in Izbica, and of her parents and younger brother who perished in Auschwitz. Professor Roseman recreates Marianne's contacts with helpers as well as with enemies who would denounce her, and analyzes her memory distortions and failures. Subtitled "Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany" "A Past in Hiding" like Victor Klemperer's "I Will Bear Witness", reveals the inhuman face of Nazi Germany in its persecution and mass murder of its Jewish citizens.
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