My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin

American scholar Peter Gay, until the age of ten or 12, considered himself to be just another German schoolboy from Berlin. The problem was that Gay's family was Jewish, in the eyes of the Nazi regime that rose to power in 1933. And still, for years, the assimilated family clung to their conviction that is was themselves who represented the 'real Germany' -- cultured, broad-minded, etc. -- and the thuggish Nazis who were the anomaly. But the Nazis had the power, and Gay was forced to deal with the way they proposed to solve their "Jewish Question". Decades after his family finally fled, he responds by addressing his own "German Question" in this thoughtful memoir.Gay's book goes well beyond the navel-gazing and self-indulgent whimperings of many of the current memoirists. He is writing both for himself and for an outside audience, and addressing different questions for both. Why didn't the family leave earlier? Why should they have been forced to leave, to recognize that something like Auschwitz could be created by the very nation to which they considered themselves to belong? he responds, indignantly. Indeed, that raises a provocative question in a society that still grapples with the question of how to deal equitably with refugees. One otherwise intelligent person I know wondered aloud, during the days of attempted ethnic cleansing of Bosnia and later Kosovo, why people just didn't all leave when they saw the writing on the wall. My response was -- and remains -- why should they have? It was their home.Gay tells us what made Berlin home for him for his earliest years -- the chocolate desserts, the movies, flying a kite -- and how, very gradually, the city that once was his home became an alien land. Ultimately, he ends up taking refuge in his stamp collection (dominated by tropical islands), cheering for British football teams over their German rivals, and navigating the paperwork that will be necessary to help his family reach safety. The most gripping pages are undoubtedly those in which their departure is recounted, particularly the implications of Gay's father's decision to leave two weeks earlier than planned on a different ship.The real story underlying the events that Gay recounts is one of a different kind of survival than the more classic Holocaust narrative. Gay didn't have to go into hiding, dart from one refuge to another, embark on any heroic battles or join a Resistance group. But his story, while much more mundane in some ways, is just as powerful because it is the story of so many European Jews during this period: he had to find a way to live with himself, both during the 1930s and in the decades that followed. He had to survive, psychologically and emotionally, or the Nazis would have triumphed even if they hadn't managed to force him into a gas chamber. It's the story of how Gay overcame the trauma of his ordinary life become distorted beyond recognition during the Berlin of 1933 and 1939 that is ultimately the most moving part of the book -- in particular, how he was able to bring himself toward a partial reconciliation with postwar Germany.Highly recommended as a compelling and highly personal memoir. It would be interesting to read this in conjunction with memoirs or fiction by those who grew up in Germany as heirs to the Nazi era, such as  What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?: Growing Up in Germany  or  The Reader (Oprah's Book Club)  (now a movie that I also highly recommend, having seen a preview last week.)

I usually make a point of not re-reading other Amazon reviews before writing my own review of a book I've just finished, but in this case, for some reason, I strayed from my usual practice...I'm surprised that few of my fellow reviewers have mentioned how amusing Peter Gay's book is - this is the one aspect that drew me in when I finally got around to reading "My German Question" - his description of projecting anti-semitism on a German money changer when returning to Germany as an adult. I found his self-deprecating self-analysis very funny and very entertaining.Many people, including non-jews, who pay attention to such things, feel ambivalent about modern Germany. I myself, an erstwhile German Literature scholar, have said things in anger that could probably get me arrested (I have since been told that it is actually illegal to call someone a Nazi in Germany today), to a native who had taken my seat at the Hofbrauhaus. One of the minor disappointments of my life was to discover that Germans today are not obsessed with the question of German collective guilt - that Germany exists only in the novels of Heinrich Boell, from what I can tell.I agree with those who have noted that Gay has a tendency to tell us that times were tough, without really describing what specifically was tough about it, in detail. We read a lot about his strategies for coping with his isolation as a Jew in Nazi Germany, and I found this very interesting, but I missed seeing more description of what it was exactly he was coping with.The book makes a very interesting companion to Wolfgang Samuel's "German Boy" and especially "Coming to Colorado" which I also read recently. It's ironic that both Samuels and Gay should end up in Denver, of all places.One minor frustration with this paperback edition: the book is tall and thin, an annoying form factor that I did not enjoy holding. I probably would not buy this book if I had picked it up browsing in a bookstore, and I put off reading it after ordering from Amazon simply because I didn't like the shape. In the end however, I'm glad I overcame this deterrent!

Relatively short book about what it was like to grow up in pre-Nazi Germany and the struggles and perils they met as they made their escape to the US.

Go back in time to find a story you may never find again. A history you might not imagine. Well done, Peter

Mostly very good-perceptive, insightful, even profound at times.

My daughter and I have been reading together since the day of her birth. She is a Sophomore at U of Miami in Coral Gables. Dad and I have been reading since I was born. She suggested this book to me. I to Dad. I have read alot of Halocaust books in my 60 years, but did as I was asked as did my Father. At first I was not impressed. But now, a month after closing the cover, I'd really like to meet this man. I have a few questions. What a childhood! The book was a very good teaching tool for my daughter AND myself. My dad, a jewish man in America who served in the Asian Theater, loved it, too. He has a whole different set of questions. So, three generations would love to have Peter and Ruth for a dinner!

This is a personal history of the what it was like when the Nazis took over Germany, told by a master History teacher.

This book is full HISTORY!!! I enjoyed this very much!!!

I FOUND THIS VERY HARD TO READ ,UNLIKE MOST BIOGRAPHICAL BOOKS I HAVE READ. VERY SLOW START , VERY SLOW PACED , AND DEFINATLY NOT WHAT I EXPECTED.

i found this book fairly interesting but not as good as some other books i have read about growing up in germany in this period

Excellent read

One sailing away from the Saint Louis! What a story: chilling and compelling. Beautifully written, albeit with a kind of teutonic/academic coldness, in the author's 'acquired first language.'