Rebuilt from Broken Glass A German Jewish Life Remade in America

Author/Creator:

Behrend, Fred, 1926- author

Publication/Creation:

West Lafayette, Indiana : Purdue University Press, 2017

Format:

Book

Edition:

1st ed.

More Details

Additional/Related Title Information

Full Title:

Rebuilt from Broken Glass A German Jewish Life Remade in America / Fred Behrend with Larry Hanover ; introduction by Hasia R. Diner ; foreword by Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer

Series Titles:

Shofar supplements in Jewish studies
Shofar supplements in Jewish studies.

Related Names

Additional Author/Creators:

Hanover, Larry, 1967-, author

Subjects/Genre

Subjects:

Jews, German--New York (State)--New York--Biography
Jewish refugees--New York (State)--New York--Biography
Jews--Germany--Lüdenscheid--Biography
New York (N.Y.)--Biography

Description/Summary

Table of Contents:

Growing up in Germany -- Kristallnacht and Sachsenhausen -- Biding time in Cuba -- A new life in New York -- A king on Riverside Drive -- Tales of the unlikely soldier -- Finding my way in New York -- Tales of other escapes -- Germany through an older man's eyes -- Looking back.

Summary:

Symbolized by a three-hundred-year-old Seder plate, the religious life of Fred Behrend's family had centered largely around Passover and the tale of the Jewish people's exodus from tyranny. When the Nazis came to power, the wide-eyed boy and his family found themselves living a twentieth-century version of that exodus, escaping oppression and persecution in Germany for Cuba and ultimately a life of freedom and happiness in the United States. Behrend's childhood came to a crashing end with Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) and his father's harrowing internment at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. But he would not be defined by these harrowing circumstances. Behrend would go on to experience brushes with history involving the defeated Germans. By the age of twenty, he had run a POW camp full of Nazis, been an instructor in a program aimed at denazifying specially selected prisoners, and been assigned by the U.S. Army to watch over Wernher von Braun, the designer of the V-2 rocket that terrorized Europe and later chief architect of the Saturn V rocket that sent Americans to the moon. Behrend went from a sheltered life of wealth in a long-gone, old-world Germany, dwelling in the gilded compound once belonging to the manufacturer of the zeppelin airships, to a poor Jewish immigrant in New York City learning English from Humphrey Bogart films. Upon returning from service in the U.S. Army, he rose out of poverty, built a successful business in Manhattan, and returned to visit Germany a dozen times, giving him unique perspective into Germany's attempts to surmount its Nazi past.

Language:

English

Physical Type/Description:

1 online resource (182 pages) : illustrations

Additional Identifiers

Catalog ID (MMSID):

9936786204802486

ISBN:

9781612495033
1612495036
9781612495026
1612495028

OCLC Number:

999442349
1000116269