Before the Holocaust three Jewish lives, 1870-1939

The memoirs describe the experiences and lives of three German Jews, Käte Frankenthal, Max Moses Polke, and Joseph Benjamin Levy, before and during the Nazi era. Frankenthal's essay describes the hardship of being a Jewish socialist. Polke's memoir describes his life before the Nazis came to power and contrasts it with the effect of the Nuremberg Laws on him. His memoir also describes the conditions in the concentration camp of Buchenwald. Levy's memoir describes such historic events as the Nazi book burning, the Jewish boycott, and Kristallnacht.