We Were So Beloved

by Gloria Devidas Kirchheimer

The massive terror of November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht, forced the German Jews to finally abandon their unrealistic hope that the Nazi persecution would cease. Those who were able to fled their country, the land where they were so beloved, and proud of their German heritage. More than 20,000 of these German Jews came together in Washington Heights in New York City and created a German Jewish enclave nicknamed the Fourth Reich by their American neighbours.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822939975
• ISBN13: 9780822939979
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Length: 367 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

fixing my mistakes

Manfred Kirchheimer was my great grand father's nephew. So naturally being Jewish I'm very interested in the Holocaust. I read the family book, and loved it. When i was younger I would just flip through the photos, and look at all the people I knew. But now I've read it numerous times, seen the film, and have the poster in my room. I think that just like the other books about the Holocaust, and jewish history are great. Hard to believe the horrible thing Hitler did happend nearly 60 years ago. Sarah Waterman

A drifted Kirchheimer

Manfred Kirchheimer was my great grand fathers brother. So naturaly being jewish i'm very interested in the holocaust. i read the family book, and loved it. When i was younger i would just flip through the photos and look at all the people i knew. But now i've read it numorous times, seen the film and have the poster in my room. I think that just like the other books about the Holocaust and jewish history are great. Hard to believe the horrible thing hitler did happend nearly 60 years ago. Sarah Waterman

The people interviewed don't represent all German Jews

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!