We Were So Beloved: Autobiography of a German Jewish Community

Rating:
Summary: The people interviewed don't represent all German Jews
Review: I came to the U.S. in 1940 at age 13, a Jewish refugee from Munich, Germany, and spent most of the first year here in Washington Heights, attending PS 189 on 189th Street. I find that the people interviewed in the book fail to mention the economic depression that gripped Germany as much as it did the U.S. from 1929 on. I still remember accompanying my mother to a soup kitchen every day during the Summer of 1932 for our only sustenance. The economy was as much a cause for the election of Hitler in 1933 as it was for FDR at the same time. It seems that the pople interviewed in the book were not really representative of all German Jews, for there was a significant number of lower middle class families suffering economically as we were. At the same time, I found the exaggerated recollections of the Washington Heights refugees very characteristic of the people I knew there, including many of my relatives. It was, of course, natural to look back on the "good old days" in Germany vis-a-vis the difficult life in New York, and the title of the book is extremely well chosen in characterizing the refugees' warm, but false recollections of life before Hitler. We were NEVER beloved!

Rating:
Summary: The people interviewed don't represent all German Jews
Review: I came to the U.S. in 1940 at age 13, a Jewish refugee from Munich, Germany, and spent most of the first year here in Washington Heights, attending PS 189 on 189th Street. I find that the people interviewed in the book fail to mention the economic depression that gripped Germany as much as it did the U.S. from 1929 on. I still remember accompanying my mother to a soup kitchen every day during the Summer of 1932 for our only sustenance. The economy was as much a cause for the election of Hitler in 1933 as it was for FDR at the same time. It seems that the pople interviewed in the book were not really representative of all German Jews, for there was a significant number of lower middle class families suffering economically as we were. At the same time, I found the exaggerated recollections of the Washington Heights refugees very characteristic of the people I knew there, including many of my relatives. It was, of course, natural to look back on the "good old days" in Germany vis-a-vis the difficult life in New York, and the title of the book is extremely well chosen in characterizing the refugees' warm, but false recollections of life before Hitler. We were NEVER beloved!