Since antiquity, European Jewish diaspora communities have used formal appeals to secular and religious authorities to secure favors or protection. Such petitioning took on particular significance in modern dictatorships, often as the only tool left for voicing political opposition. During the Holocaust, tens of thousands of European Jews turned to individual and collective petitions in the face of state-sponsored violence. This volume offers the first extensive analysis of petitions authored by Jews in nations ruled by the Nazis and their allies. It demonstrates their underappreciated value as a historical source and reveals the many attempts of European Jews to resist intensifying persecution and actively struggle for survival.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner
Chapter 1. To Not “Live as a Pariah”: Jewish Petitions as Individual and Collective Protest in the Greater German Reich
Wolf Gruner
Chapter 2. “Did We Not Shed Our Blood for France?” Identity and Resistance in Entreaties for the Jewish Internees of Occupied France, 1940–44
Stacy Renee Veeder
Chapter 3. Honorary Czechs and Germans: Petitions for Aryan Status in the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Benjamin Frommer
Chapter 4. Legal Resistance through Petitions during the Holocaust: The Strategies of Romanian Jewish Leader Wilhelm Filderman, 1940–44
Stefan C. Ionescu
Chapter 5. Attempts to Take Action In a Coerced Community? Petitions to the Jewish Council in the Lodz Ghetto during World War II
Svenja Bethke
Chapter 6. Petitioning Matters: Jews and Non-Jews Negotiating Ghettoization in Budapest, 1944
Tim Cole
Chapter 7. Global Jewish Petitioning and the Reconsideration of Spatial Analysis in Holocaust Historiography: The Case of Rescue in the Philippines
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan
Chapter 8. Petitioning for “Equal Treatment”: The Struggles of Intermarried Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany
Maximilian Strnad
Conclusion
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner
Appendix: European-Jewish Petitions during the Holocaust
Bibliograhpy
Index
About the Author :
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan is the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History, Professor of History, and Interim Director of the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the author of The Language of Nazi Genocide (2009) and The German-Jewish Press and Journalism Beyond Borders, 1933-1943 (2023, in Hebrew) as well as the co-editor of Beyond ‘Ordinary Men’: Christopher R. Browning and Holocaust Historiography (2019) and Police and Holocaust (2023, in German).
Review :
“…the book succeeds in being informative and provocative… Taken together, these essays highlight a generally neglected subject that clearly merits more scholarly attention…[they] make a worthy contribution to scholarship and is well worth the read.” • Studies In Contemporary Jewry
“The sheer breadth of these materials is fascinating. The petitions were written from all over occupied Europe. Central Europe was a center of these petitioning activities, with thousands of documents showing strong feelings of attachment to the dominant culture…Overall, this volume coheres nicely. The editors acknowledge in their conclusion that this is only the beginning of a conversation, that much more work needs to be done to understand how petitions function and how they might help reshape our understanding of the Holocaust. Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner are to be commended for opening this conversation.” • Central European History
“This title is recommended for academic libraries and school libraries that want to deepen their collection(s) on the period. Written documentation, and especially firsthand accounts of specific areas, people or episodes can help provide a deeper understanding of the varied ways Jews tried to survive this horrible period.” • AJL News and Reviews
“In exploring how persecuted Jews petitioned Nazi officials—and, in some cases, Jewish leaders—for justice, rights, and mercy, editors Wolf Gruner and Thomas Pegelow Kaplan have initiated a thought-provoking and entirely new approach to Holocaust Studies. Challenging those who claim Jews were “passive” victims or that only political or armed defiance can “count” as resistance, this volume distinctly reveals that despite having far less power than the authorities, Jews demonstrated agency, protested -- even defied -- persecution, and, in some instances, succeeded. These eye-opening essays highlight a spectrum of responses over geographical regions and over time, becoming ever more urgent. Here we see active Jewish individuals and groups grasping at the kind of actions available to them, contesting oppression as it increased exponentially.” • Marion Kaplan, New York University
“This impressive book covers an important and hitherto overlooked research topic. It is a welcome contribution to developing a more nuanced understanding of the role of petitions as acts of resistance.” • Gilad Ben-Nun, Leipzig University
“The eight chapters of this collection, each by distinguished scholars in the field, bring to the fore the pleas of Jews suffering persecution in Nazi-occupied Europe. They demonstrate the value of petitions as an underused historical source that helps recover these voices.” • Greg Burgess, Deakin University
