Born Jewish: A Childhood in Occupied Europe

by Marcel Liebman

Book Overview

Eminent Marxist intellectual recounts class struggles in Nazi-torn Belgium

Marcel Liebman was one of post-war Europe's preeminent Marxist intellectuals. This, his memoir of Nazi-occupied Belgium, is both an elegy and an indictment. Liebman's account of his childhood in Brussels under the Nazi occupation explores the emergence of his class-consciousness against a background of resistance and collaboration. He documents the internal class...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1844670392
• ISBN13: 9781844670390
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: Verso
• Length: 181 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.6" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

wonderful read except for last chapter (and intro by Jacqueline Rose)

This is a spellbinding account of a Jewish teenager in Belgium, during the war. The second of four boys in a loving Jewish family in Brussels, Liebman gives density and texture to the anxieties, terrors, and perils of life under the Nazis. Always on the run, sometimes together, sometimes apart, Liebman is a superb observer of the venalities and kindnesses that accompany him through these tragic days. It is also a compelling coming of age story. All except the last chapter, which takes advantage of his survivor's status to mount a soap box against racism, with a special target being Zionism (hence Jacqueline Rose's breathless intro). Even aside from its polemics, the chapter feels like it is tacked on to what is otherwise a superb addition to Holocaust memoirs.

A vivid memoir of one man's childhood tale of Nazi control, familial struggle, and the betrayal he f

Born Jewish: A Childhood In Occupied Europe by graphically authored by Marcel Liebman and deftly translated by Liz Heron is a vivid memoir of one man's childhood tale of Nazi control, familial struggle, and the betrayal he faced from more powerful Jews in times already hard. As a revealing and historically important biographical account of international history during the second world war, Born Jewish is an invaluable documentation which is very highly recommended for historians and laymen alike, as each and all may take some interest and understanding in this book. Born Jewish is a compelling and valued addition to the growing library of Holocaust literature so fundamentally necessary if the world is never again to experience genocide on such a massive and methodical scale.

A New Perspective on Nazi party and Holocaust

The holocaust is a "popular" topic. I don't mean that in the positive sense, but in the publishing sense. Much has been published on the holocaust, Nazi occupation and the party Hitler hosted. History demands that people write it and people demand to hear "the truth" about the past. "Born Jewish" offers something different, something that isn't necessarily in demand, but is neccessary for the canon of work on the war and aftermath of the holocaust. Marcel Liebman, for anyone unfamiliar with his other work, is a reknowned Marxist/Leninist/Soviet Union historian and historical analysist. This is clearly, his most personal work, but he does not leave his politics or his academic work at the door. "Born Jewish", as he says, "questions history", not in the sense of the accuracy of the event(Liebman writes how dismayed he is that the world did not fully accept Hannah Arendt's accounts of Jewish collaboration with the Nazi's as having actually happened.) but in the sense of the accuracy of historical accounts of it. The new perspective Liebman adds is one often obscured by accounts of Nazi occupation and anti-semitism: that class conflict did not dissolve the day the swastika was raised over Europe's cities. In fact, the Nazi's capitalized on the class difference amongst Jewish populations. For Liebman, the horror of his brother's execution at Auschwitz is intimantly connected with the horrors of exploitation and collaboration within the Jewish community. Liebman composes his memories carefully and beautifully, resisting sacrilization of experiences he realizes must answer to history as much as to his own heart, and criticizing the radical Zionism that he was to see flourish during his lifetime. The incredible forward by Jacqueline Rose is a great appetite whetter for the book. She sums up the book far better than I ever could: "Amongst other things, this memoir stands as an extraordinary rejoinder to those who insist that Israel is the only and definitive answer to the genocide of the Jews...It is one of the strenghts of [the memoir] that Liebman can be so unerring in this analysis while at the same time acknowledging the point where understanding trails off into uncomprehending terror, where the most painful part of mourning trumps all rational thought." I highly reccommend this book for anyone who was interested in the slough of memoirs on the subject. It should be read alongside Judith Butler's new book on mourning, violence, 9/11, anti-semitism and the Israel-Palestinian conflict, "Precarious Life".