Guided Review on Between Dignity and Despair. Jewish Life in Nazi Germany by Marion Kaplan

General Advice

Keep these questions close by while you are reading the book. It might make sense to download this document and take notes right into it. Or you can print it out and take notes by hand. Either way, make sure that you write down page number as well when taking down information; you do not want to end up plagiarizing because you took bad notes.

Again, I ask to keep in mind that his is not a high school “book report” but a book review. The questions below are meant to guide you to hit the central issues that a good book review should cover, which is contingent on you synthesizing a lot of information. Don’t get sidetracked into the details of the certain stories.

Advice for this book

While reading this book and thinking about it, consider the category of gender: what were the traditional gender roles in German Jewish families? How did they change under the impact of Nazism? Did they change completely? How did these changes and non-changes affect Jewish families, their daily lives, and their decision-making? How did the state’s attitudes about gender influence the persecution of German Jews? Did the state’s stances change over time?

Consider the following questions

What are the main themes of Kaplan’s monograph? What is Kaplan’s main intent in writing this book; what does she want the reader to understand?
Do NOT write more than half a page on this!
Do NOT focus on Kaplan’s personal background.

Why and how did Jewish life change between 1933 and the November Pogrom [Kristallnacht] in 1938?

Think about gender roles, gendered treatment, and gendered experience!

How did this change affect men and boys? How did they react and why?
How did it affect women and girls? How did they react and why?
How did gender and gender roles affect thinking and decision-making about emigration?
Who considered emigration first and why? Who decided on emigration and why?
Who left and who stayed behind? Why?
Be analytical and precise; don’t get lost in the stories.
Pay attention to the November Pogrom [Kristallnacht] in 1938; one can see many of the analytical points clearly in that context.

· What were the experiences of German Jews between 1939 and 1945?

Were experiences—life and death—influenced by gender? If so, how?

· What are Kaplan’s sources for her argument? Do her sources allow her to make her argument? In other words: are her sources representative?

Don’t criticize her for not doing things she did not set out to do. In other words, do not blame her for not having sources from Gentile (non-Jewish) Germans or Nazi party members. That’s not what her book is about.

· Why should we care?

Avoid generalities, such as “so that something as bad as the Holocaust never happens again” or the annoying cliché that “history repeats itself.” You can do better than that!

Writing Advice

You can start this paper matter of factly by saying something along the lines of “Marion Kaplan’s book Between Dignity and Despair considers….” No need for a fancy introduction! It’s a book review.
Avoid the verbs “to feel” or “to believe.” Make arguments.
Make sure that you do not use contractions.
Avoid redundancies/repetitions.
Italicize book titles and foreign words that have not migrated into English. In other words, Gestapo is not italicized.
Make sure that you footnote paraphrases and direct quotes.
Make sure that your footnotes adhere to standards & include a bibliography.
Carefully edit your paper.