The Unorthodox Approach to Jewish History in the German Democratic Republic: An Interview with Helmut Eschwege

Abstract

Helmut Eschwege is the German Democratic Republic's major authority on modern Jewish history. In 1966 he edited KennzeichenJ: Bilder, Dokumente, Berichte zur Geschichte der Verbrechen des Hitlerfaschismus an den deutschenJuden, (East Berlin), the first comprehensive documentation of the destruction of German Jewry under Hitler to be published in the GDR. When, in the late 1960s, Eschwege's study of the German Jewish anti-Fascist was rejected for publication in his own country, he sent it on to the Leo Baeck Institute in London. It was published in a shortened form in English in the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, XV (1970) under the title Resistance of German Jews against the Nazi Regime (pp. 143-80).' This work was later elaborated, refined, and published in German as a book coauthored with Konrad Kwiet, Selbstbehauptung und Widerstand: Deutsche Juden im Kampf um Existenz und Menschenwiirde 1933-1945 (Hans Christians Verlag, Hamburg, 1984). Eschwege's other major work is Die Synagoge in der deutschen Geschichte: Eine Dokumentation (Dresden, 1980). When I requested permission to interview Mr. Eschwege in the Summer of 1984, I was told it was impossible to reach him at that time (which was not unlikely). But when the next year I again requested permission two months ahead of the proposed date my letter was neither acknowledged nor answered. At about this time I heard that Hajo Funke, a West German political scientist and journalist, had taped an interview with Eschwege in West Berlin in early autumn 1983. Dr. Funke was kind enough to contribute his cassette to my research project on Jews in the GDR. The translation and editing are mine.