The Unorthodox View of Jewish History in the German Democratic Republic

Abstract

Helmut Eschwege is the German Democratic Republic’s major authority on modern Jewish history. In 1966 he edited Kennzeichen J: Bilder, Dokumente, Berichte zur Geschichte der Verbrechen des Hitlerfaschismus an den deutschen Juden, (East Berlin), the first comprehensive document­ation of the destruction of German Jewry under Hitler to be published in the GDR. When, in the late 1960s, Eschwege’s study of the German Jewish anti-Fascist Resistance was rejected for publication in his own country, he sent it on to the Leo Baeck Institute in London. It was published in a shortened form in English in the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, Vol. XV (1970) under the title ‘Resistance of German Jews against the Nazi Regime’ (pp. 143–80)¹. This work was later elaborated, refined and published in German as a book co-authored with Konrad Kwiet, Selbstbehauptung und Widerstand: Deutsche Juden im Kampf um Existenz und Menschenwürde 1933–1945 (Hans Christians Verlag, Hamburg, 1984). Eschwege’s other major work is Die Synagoge in der deutschen Geschichte: Eine Dokumentation (Dresden, 1980).

This interview was originally published in New German Critique, Spring — Summer 1986.