A Sense of Belonging. Young Jewish Communists in Weimar and Nazi Germany

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

ABSTRACT This article argues for a social history approach to explain Jewish dissidence instead of ideologically labelling. Like most youngsters of their generation, young Jewish adolescents longed above all for a sense of community, which – given the climate of the Weimar Republic – tended to be politically framed. Most of those who ended up in the Communist party had started their collective socialization in the German-Jewish Youth Movement. It was this socialization – the Youth Movement, not Judaism – that predisposed them to their later political options, but not necessarily to a tendency towards dissidence.