March 21: Strassler Center presents lecture on ‘privileged’ victims – intermarried Jews

“Privileged” Victims: Intermarried Families in Nazi Central Europe

  • March 21 at 4:15 p.m.
  • Rose Library, Cohen-Lasry House

Benjamin Frommer, Northwestern University, Holocaust Education Foundation

In the Nazi hierarchy of persecution, intermarried Jews and their children formed a separate category of victims. Jews who had married Gentiles or converted to Christianity were subject to antisemitic persecution, expropriation, and the threat of arrest. At the same time, they had stronger ties to majority communities, were exempted from certain restrictions and transports, and survived the war in far greater numbers than “full” Jews. In short, they became the “last Jews” present in Gentile communities.

Frommer explores the Nazi state’s gendered policies toward these intermarried families and examines their responses to isolation and separation over the course of the war and after.