Bloodlines – Recovering Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws, from Patton’s Trophy to Public Memorial

By Anthony Platt

The physical typescript of the Nuremberg Laws – from their discovery by two Jewish American soldiers in Eichstätt, Germany, in 1945 to their first public exhibition in 1999 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles – is the focus of Anthony Platt’s riveting book, Bloodlines.

Platt, a professor emeritus at California State University, Sacramento, was on sabbatical with his partner and co-author Cecelia O’Leary doing research at the Huntington Library in 1999.

His curiosity was aroused by the controversy stirred by the Huntington’s announcement that it was loaning an original copy of the Nuremberg Laws to the new Skirball Cultural Center. Received by the library from Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., in June 1945, the documents had been out of sight in the Huntington’s vault 54 years.

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin

By Erik Larson

At the start of one of the most critical periods in U.S.-German relations, President Franklin D. Roosevelt found himself unable to find a candidate willing to accept the role of ambassador to Germany in 1933.

Germany was volatile and the assignment oxymoronic: do what you can to protest Nazi treatment of Jews in Germany unofficially while maintaining cordial official diplomatic relations.

Wiser, more experienced men than Professor William E. Dodd, who ultimately accepted the position, turned the post down.

Fräulein Rabbiner Jonas; The Story of the First Woman Rabbi

by Elisa Klapheck

Had it not been for the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and for Regina Jonas' foresight in leaving her documents with the Berlin Jewish community before being deported by the Nazis, her life and achievements might well have been lost in the mists of history.

Fräulein Rabbiner Regina Jonas became the first woman to be ordained as rabbi on Dec. 27, 1935. Seven years later, she and her 66-year-old mother Sara were sent to Theresienstadt. They arrived at Auschwitz on one of the last transports on Oct. 12, 1944, and were probably murdered on arrival.

It would not be until 1974 that another woman was ordained a rabbi: Sally Priesand in the Reform Movement, followed in 1976 by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso in the Reconstructionist movement, and in 1985 by the ordination of Amy Eilberg in the Conservative movement.