A book to be written

My purpose in opening this blog is to explore the responses, both in the US and in Germany, to a planned book on the role of the non-Jewish member of what the Nazis called "Privileged Mixed Marriages", meaning marriages between a Jew and a non-Jew with non-Jewish children. The "Arian" partners were the only "guardian angels" of many families under the Nazis, but they were under constant threat of losing that role, either by Party edict or by death.

This will be a historical novel rather than a biography; it will freely mix personal memories with fictional (but historically correct) events. To be written by a still surviving "Mischling" (mixed-race offspring) of such a “privileged” mixed marriage who sees a need to describe a so-far widely neglected aspect of the history of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. Much has been written about the horrendous actions by the Nazis against the majority of European Jewry. This book should increase our collective understanding of that time by describing what the Nazis meant by "privileged" -- the constant and hardly noticeable tightening of the screws on a minority of the racially Jewish population and their families who were largely protected from deportation, but not much else.

The literature on this subject is sparse indeed, and there is not much I have found, in German or in English, that concentrates on the agony of the one person whose very life constituted the protection for the entire family. In my own family and in the book the father was racially a Jew, although he had converted to Christianity. The mother was a non-Jewish German who bore the burdens suffered by any woman in a war-ravaged country, but in addition had to deal with the likelihood that her protective role for husband and children may be further limited or even taken away, particularly since she was suffering from a mysterious and possibly fatal disease.

This book will be written in English for the American market where the understanding of the Holocaust is spotty and often limited to black-and-white stereotypes. A well-educated American lawyer, a Jew himself, said to me once "if your father was not killed in a concentration camp he must have been a Nazi". Such an opinion reveals as much misunderstanding as the question I once got: "You were a half-Jew in school; didn't the other kids call you a "Saujude" to your face?"

The book will span the time from 1919 to 1945, one chapter for usually one year at a time. Each chapter will have a single-paragraph preamble to put the action into historical context. It will not be necessary to read that historical preambles to follow the emotional, mental, and physical events of the characters. It will be written in first-person from the point in time when I begin to have personal memories of events which, by and large, completely escaped my understanding at the time.

Back to the purpose of this blog: I’m asking for your input. My questions are these:

1. Do you think there is still enough interest in the subject matter in the USA or in Germany?
2. Do you know of relevant publications on the limited theme, i.e. not the Holocaust in general?
3. What do you think of the general approach to the book and its organization?
4. What other comments can you offer?

I would be most grateful for your feedback or any comments you may have, either in German or in English, whatever is easier for you.

Thank you -

Mischling.