Inge Deutschkron’s Memoir Ich trug den gelben Stern (1978): Reportage as Counternarrative to the Americanization of the Holocaust Marjanne E� Goozé University of Georgia Abstract : This essay considers Inge Deutschkron’s German-language Holocaust memoir Ich trug den gelben Stern. The paper examines details recounted of her life in Berlin under Hitler, her accomplishments as a journalist and author, and her approach to relating her experiences. The memoir documents important information about survival underground and the history of the persecution of German Jews. Written before the advent of memory culture, the book engages readers as a counternarrative to the Americanization of the Holocaust and other archetypes of the innocent and optimistic victim or the male concentration camp prisoner. Deutschkron’s work offers an intricate narrative of survival underground by a writer whose socialist politics, German nationality, female gender, and journalistic narrative style may not always accord with American or even German expectations of an authentic Holocaust narrative but is for just these reasons deserving of increased attention. Keywords : Inge Deutschkron, Holocaust Memoir, Berlin, Survival Underground, Otto Weidt, 1933-1945 In 1978 Inge Deutschkron, who was born in 1922 and is a Jewish-German survivor of the Holocaust, published her memoir, Ich trug den gelben Stern� 1 In the memoir, Deutschkron’s profession as a journalist reveals itself as she relates her personal story embedded within a detailed history of the Holocaust in Germany, and especially in Berlin. This examination of her book will investigate how Deutschkron’s memoir both conforms with and distinguishes itself from what may be seen as the genre of personal narratives of the Holocaust. The first part of the essay provides details of Deutschkron’s story of her life in Berlin under 60 Marjanne E� Goozé Hitler, considers her accomplishments as a writer, and analyzes her approach to relating her experiences. The second part of the essay offers reasons why the book, still read in Germany, has not become known in the United States or received extensive scholarly attention. Inge Deutschkron and her mother, Ilse, survived the Third Reich with the help of friends, eventually going underground in Berlin, as what were called U-Boote. After the war, she worked for the Social Democrats in Berlin, but due to East German politics and her desire to be reunited with her father, she moved to London on 2 August 1946. She tried to resume her education, but soon broke it off due to lack of finances. She worked as a secretary for the Socialist International in London, continuing her family’s connections to socialist movements. Desiring to return to Berlin eventually, she delayed her trip and traveled first to India, Burma, Nepal, and then to Israel. In 1955 she returned not to Berlin, but to the capital of West Germany, Bonn, where she began recounting her experiences for German radio, newspapers, and magazines. In 1958 she began writing for Maariv, an Israeli newspaper, in 1960 becoming its Germany correspondent� From West Germany she reported on the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials� Deutschkron became an Israeli citizen in 1966 and moved there in 1972, continuing to work for Maariv until 1987. Deutschkron appears very briefly in Claude Lanzmann’s film, Shoah, mostly as a disembodied voice speaking in English about the deportations of Jews in Berlin. However, there are over three hours of out-takes from Lanzmann filmed in 1977 and 1981 available online through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Israeli memorial museum Yad Vashem� 2 A short version of her story in English is available online through Yad Vashem� 3 In these interviews she speaks of her life from 1933 until she and her mother went underground in 1943. Also, she has been a frequent speaker in Germany about her experiences� In January 2013 she gave an address to the German parliament at the age of 91� Her story was further broadcast by Volker Ludwig und Detlef Michel who wrote a play in 1989 for the Berlin youth theater, Grips, based on her memoir called, Ab Heute heißt du Sara� It continues to be performed, most recently in March 2019. 4 Deutschkron has published numerous books, including reflections on her life in Israel, her experiences after the war, and, importantly, about Otto Weidt, a blind gentile who employed blind and deaf-mute Jewish workers in his brush and broom factory, and for whom she worked for a time. In 2000 she published a continuation of her first memoir: Mein Leben nach dem Überleben: Die Fortsetzung von Ich trug den gelben Stern. Another memoir, Überleben als Verpflichtung, provides a short biography, but concentrates on her life in Germany after the war. In her first memoir, Ich trug den gelben Stern, she recounts working in a broom and brush factory for blind workers led by Otto Weidt. In 2008 she Inge Deutschkron’s Memoir Ich trug den gelben Stern (1978) 61 wrote a book with Lucas Ruegenberg focusing on Weidt, Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt: Ein Ort der Menschlichkeit im Dritten Reich� A children’s companion book preceded it, also written by the two: Papa Weidt� Deutschkron has established a foundation to promote the teaching of the Holocaust, with an emphasis as well on gentile helpers like Weidt. She has written repeatedly on non-Jewish helpers� 5 In 2014, she cooperated on a docu-drama film on Weidt: Ein blinder Held: Die Liebe des Otto Weidt, directed by Kai Christiansen. Dramatic scenes of Weidt, his Jewish love Alice Licht, and the other workers are accompanied by an interview with Deutschkron� One book arises from her work as an Israeli correspondent in Germany, Israel und die Deutschen: Das besondere Verhältnis� Her autobiographical books remain popular in Germany. It should be noted, however, that Ich trug den gelben Stern has not received critical attention in Germany in the way that Ruth Klüger’s weiter leben: Eine Jugend has been analyzed by Germanists. However, Deutschkron’s memoir remains in print and is taught in schools. Unfortunately, her writing is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world. Her memoir, translated into English in 1990 and published by a Germany-based publisher, as Outcast: A Jewish Girl in Wartime Berlin, has received almost no critical or popular attention in the U.S. It has long been out of print, but has been recently reissued as an on-demand e-book and through Amazon Digital Services� Deutschkron’s Holocaust memoir was one of the first published by a Jewish-German written in German. Personal accounts by non-German survivors began to be published right after the war and have continued to appear, but narratives by Jewish-Germans were not known in Germany� 6 Her memoir appeared before the impactful American TV miniseries Holocaust was broadcast in West Germany in 1979. The miniseries initiated intense public discussions of the Holocaust in West Germany. Her memoir, however, falls outside of any influence of American Holocaust productions and offers a non-melodramatic documentation of her experience� Deutschkron’s perspective as a journalist clearly dominates the structure and style of the narrative. As this essay will show, Deutschkron’s emphasis on placing her story within a precise historical narrative, backed up by dates and statistics, leads to a narrative that may seem lacking in pathos, in spite of the highly dramatic nature of her story. It was not written especially to tug at the heartstrings of readers, but to document her harrowing experience, situating her individual story within the larger of the Jews of Berlin� In the first half of the book, Deutschkron relates both her own personal history and includes historical background information about the rise of Jewish persecution from 1933 to 1941� Her contribution to Holocaust narratives here is significant, since as a German her story begins with Hitler’s rise to power rather than with the war and the invasion of other countries� Deutschkron’s memoir 62 Marjanne E� Goozé lends insight into reactions to Hitler’s early policies� She bolsters her narrative by providing exact dates for historical events such as the 1 April 1933 boycott of Jewish businesses (11)� She includes in the book sixteen explanatory footnotes and statistics. When discussing the November 9 pogrom, she includes a footnote from a 1968 book, quoting a New York Times article stating the number of synagogues burnt down and stores plundered (36)� Deutschkron links her own biography to exact historical events in the body of her narrative too - noting how her schooling ended the day Hitler closed Jewish schools on 2 April 1939 (61). Yet, she also mentions events of which she could have had no knowledge at the time, such as what happened to Alice Licht, Otto Weidt’s beloved, who was sent to Auschwitz (131). The frequently cited historical and statistical information serves two functions. First, it puts her own story of survival into historical context, broadening the perspective to include Jews seeking visas to emigrate and those deported to death camps (see, for example, 46 and 151—52). Second, the documented information asserts the authenticity of her story, insisting on the accuracy of her memories� Deutschkron wrote this autobiography before the advent of memory culture and our understanding of the need to assess Holocaust testimonies on the basis of confluence of the evidence. While individual memories might be faulty at times when it comes to exact details, multiple sources, including testimonies, can provide a collective of evidence. So, when she makes an error about the probable tattoo given to deportees from Berlin to the Lodz ghetto, a small detail not generally known to her readers, this mistake cannot undermine the veracity of her story (89). As a journalist, she would probably be unhappy about the error� Deutschkron makes an emphatic argument for truth, implicitly challenging Holocaust deniers without ever saying so. This gives the book both emphatic and quite dispassionate qualities� Even in 1978, Deutschkron anticipated German readers’ skepticism. She embeds her personal narrative within a factual history of the Holocaust as a defensive strategy. The two threads of personal experience and outside sources come together when she mentions how she and her mother learned of murders by gas when surreptitiously listening to the BBC (100) or when a neighbor’s son reports of treatment of Jews in the East (103)� Only rarely does the narrator assume a reflective stance from the time of her writing. In the opening chapter she speculates: “Wer hätte mir damals erklären können, was 1933 in Deutschland vor sich ging? Warum Menschen wegen ihrer Rassenzugehörigkeit, ihres Glaubens oder ihrer politischen Überzeugung verfolgt, erniedrigt und gepeinigt wurden? Habe ich es später verstanden? Ich glaube nicht” (15). When the Gestapo searched their home in 1934, she sat and read a book, writing later: “Wenn ich daran denke, schäme ich mich noch heute, damals ‘versagt’ zu haben” (21)� Rather than viewing initial Jewish-German re- Inge Deutschkron’s Memoir Ich trug den gelben Stern (1978) 63 sponses from an outsider’s perspective, she includes herself among those unable to comprehend the beginnings of the Holocaust� She tries to explain to her readers why more German Jews did not emigrate with Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933 by explaining their loyalty to what they perceived as a humanistic German culture: Später begriff ich, daß sie sich ihrer Selbsttäuschung bewußt waren, wenn sie zusammensaßen und über Heine sprachen, Goethe zitierten und Diskussionen um Kant und Hegel führten, so als sei ihre Welt völlig in Ordnung. Damals erschien mir dies Verhalten unheimlich. Ich fühlte mich dort zu Hause, wo man der Wirklichkeit näher war� Dieser Wirklichkeit konnte man sonst nirgends entgehen� (67) Here she does blame the cultural elite for distancing themselves from politics, while she, brought up in a socialist family, was more engaged in “Wirklichkeit.” Only after the November pogrom of 1938 did the realization of their situation set in for many: “Zögernd begannen die deutschen Juden, die Wirklichkeit zu begreifen. Für viele war es zu spät, denn die Auswanderungsmöglichkeiten wurden immer geringer. [. . .] Für die deutschen Juden, auch die deutschesten unter ihnen, wurden die Geschehnisse des 9. November zum Alarmsignal” (42— 43)� Her own parents also tried to emigrate too late; only her father was able to escape to England (41)� In August 1939 she and her mother had acquired jobs as domestics in Glasgow (53), but the outbreak of the war prevented them from leaving Germany (55)� She describes her own and other Jews’ response to the beginning of the war: “Wir lebten damals wie in Trance” (64)� With the help of socialist and Jewish friends, she and her mother found work and lived in Berlin where they went underground in 1943; they began living illegally� At this point the nature of the narrative changes somewhat, becoming more emotionally compelling� Deutschkron’s determination in documenting historical facts retreats a bit as her relation of her own story gains prominence� She recounts the near constant moving from hiding place to hiding place, the need to have jobs to earn money, and being bombed out in Berlin. Noticeably absent is a detailed account of her relationship with an older man, Hans Rosenthal, who in the end could not separate himself from his mother with whom he lived (78). Rosenthal was an engineer at Osram, but also a “Materialverwalter” for the Jewish community (78)� She notes that at the height of the war he was able to move around Berlin and visit her (110, 162), and in her opinion was the last Jew not in a mixed marriage to wear the Judenstern in Berlin (120)� At the end of the war, their relationship dissolved and he desired to immigrate to the United States where his brother lived (193—94)� While the Allied victory allowed her and her mother to reclaim their real identities after they had acquired false papers several times, Deutschkron suf- 64 Marjanne E� Goozé fered from the trauma of the Holocaust and their two years in hiding. The end of the war was greeted with joy, but she could not imagine what a normal life might be like (178)� As the reality of the Holocaust and her own experiences became clear, she writes: “Freuen konnte ich mich nicht mehr” (181). As she learned further details of the Holocaust, her grief overcame her: “Ich weinte haltlos, und immer wieder von neuem überfiel mich eine entsetzliche, hoffnungslose Trauer” (182). In these passages at the close of the memoir, Deutschkron reveals the depth of her feelings to the reader, but only when writing about the time after liberation. Although she began to work in the Soviet zone of Berlin for the “Zentralverwaltung für Volksbildung” (188), she had no illusions about the Soviet occupation, mentioning how she and her mother hid from the soldiers and that her mother survived an attempted rape (181). In the end, her family’s SPD (Social Democratic Party) background and her lack of faith in the Soviet functionaries caused her to leave her job (191)� Soon thereafter, she and her mother joined her father, who had escaped to England. At the end of the war she could not feel at home in Germany, writing: “Ich fühlte mich in Deutschland fremd, unsicher und allein” (197). Although Deutschkron usually maintains a nuanced and analytical approach to the experiences of German Jews, she repeats the mistaken trope that Jews went like lambs to the slaughter (197). In her conclusion, she connects her attachment to Israel as being a bulwark against mass murder of Jews� It is perhaps surprising then that as a journalist and renowned memoirist Deutschkron spent long periods in West Germany, speaking and writing in German, as well as working for an Israeli newspaper. Indeed, documenting her experiences and reporting for Israelis from West Germany became her life’s work� The second part of my essay will discuss how Deutschkron’s memoir distinguishes itself from our understanding of a “typical” Holocaust memoir and why it should be given greater critical consideration� Deutschkron’s book can be seen as a counternarrative to what scholars such as Hilene Flanzbaum and the contributors to her book call “the Americanization of the Holocaust�” I would argue that this Americanization impacts general German perceptions as well, although not necessarily academic ones. This so-called Americanization began with the 1952 play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, based on the diary of Anne Frank and the widespread teaching of her diary in American schools� It continued most prominently with the American miniseries Holocaust in 1978, Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List (1993), and the establishment of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, planned during the 1980s and opened in 1993. In the case of representational and many autobiographical works, certain values Inge Deutschkron’s Memoir Ich trug den gelben Stern (1978) 65 prevail that may express American ideologies more than historical facts. These works are forward-looking and draw clear lines between good and evil persons� Based upon a popular reading of the perceptions of Anne Frank, an optimistic outlook on the goodness of humanity is required� From Holocaust the miniseries, which does not shy away from the horrors of genocide as many American representations do, there is a clear delineation of good and evil persons. Schindler’s List points to righteous gentiles, innocent but powerless Jews, and Germans of unmitigated evil. Needless to say, all of these works and many others, such as the film Defiance, contain an element of romance as well. In addition to dramatized and fictionalized accounts, Holocaust memoirs have also participated in the memory boom of the two last decades, but the memoirs that infiltrate book clubs and even university courses frequently prefer victims who are unquestionably “good,” claim a strong Jewish identity, and evoke sympathy or even empathy, while the German perpetrators are “evil.” Also, there must be some sort of “happy end” where the survivor or victim exhibits a positive attitude. While Inge Deutschkron was clearly a victim of Nazi persecution, the memoir is complicated by multiple factors that prohibit its inclusion in the American canon of Holocaust memoirs. First, Deutschkron did not experience the horrors of ghettos or camps, but survived underground. Some may not consider her as an “authentic” survivor. In her essay, “Questions of Authenticity,” Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi comments upon how scholars have created a hierarchy of both testimonies and experiences, where those who perished or were closest to those murdered by the Einsatzgruppen or in the death camps are deemed the most authentic victims (56—62)� Survivors who like Deutschkron were never imprisoned fall next to last in this hierarchy; the last are those who emigrated before the start of the war. So, while her story of survival as a U-Boot, going underground with her mother, and living precariously with none or false papers in Berlin is harrowing, it does not present the expected story of a concentration camp - especially of an Auschwitz experience� I would contend that her memoir equally deserves our attention because it contributes to our understanding of the breadth of different experiences. Deutschkron without apology portrays her parents as committed socialists who are often helped by others who share their politics. The American reading public has been generally very uncomfortable with socialism� Deutschkron’s first experiences of persecution came through the discrimination against her father primarily as a socialist and then as a Jew� She shared her political views with her father, working after the war for left-wing causes. She was raised in a highly secular environment and begins her memoir with her mother informing her when she was ten years old: 66 Marjanne E� Goozé “Du bist Jüdin,” hörte ich die Stimme meiner Mutter. “Du mußt den anderen zeigen, daß du deshalb nicht geringer bist als sie�” Was war das, eine “Jüdin? ” (9) Her secular upbringing and the lives of her parents, however, soon threw them into a Jewish milieu as jobs were lost and she had to attend Jewish schools. The survival of Deutschkron and her mother, who were constantly on the run in Berlin, seeking shelter and employment, was highly dependent on their socialist connections� Although she and her mother had to move many times after they went underground and took numerous jobs, including working in a laundry, they were often able to rely on socialist friends. As avowed socialists, her parents made her “selbstbewußt und stolz” (10)� As those who do not practice their religion, she and her family complicate American expectations that persecution is based solely on being Jewish, rather than on political factors as well� Her story does not accommodate an American master narrative that ties together ideals of freedom with those of free market capitalism in the face of the Cold War� Other complicating factors are that Germans are not all depicted as National Socialists and Jewish cooperation is mentioned. As previously noted, she criticizes Berlin Jews who lingered too long in Germany when they had a chance to emigrate� Deutschkron further makes clear how Jews aided the Gestapo in compiling lists of those to be deported (91) and in hunting down those in hiding (129)� She and her mother are assisted in surviving underground with false papers and jobs by benevolent German helpers. For example, in 1941 she went to work as a secretary under a false name and age for Otto Weidt (70). Deutschkron, furthermore, does not ignore German perpetrators and bystanders� She can be quite harsh in remarking on how non-Jewish Germans made an effort not to know what was happening to their Jewish neighbors (76) or showing how they were complicit in the theft of their property. Yet overall, her tone lacks overt anger or bitterness, something that American readers might expect. Notably, her German nationality complicates the presumed oppositional binary of “Germans” and “Jews�” In memoirs and diaries by non-German Jews such as Elie Wiesel’s Night, Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, The Journal of Hélène Berr, or the Diary of David Sierakowiak, the Germans are a foreign enemy. Although these writers do not refrain from criticizing their own countrymen or Jews who collaborate, they maintain a clear distinction between the Germans and themselves. For Deutschkron, this delineation is not possible because she and her family have long roots in Germany� Her name - for which she is chastised by Nazi officials - contains within it the word “Deutsch” - German. At the time of the writing of the memoir she is well aware of her parents’ and other Inge Deutschkron’s Memoir Ich trug den gelben Stern (1978) 67 German Jews’ love for a Germany that did not love them back� Deutschkron informs readers how German Jews who were ordered to make lists of their possessions prior to deportation did so as good Germans “ohne Widerstand” (93) and how the Jewish-German “Ordner” carried the removals out, using the defensive phrase of perpetrators: “Sie taten ihre Pflicht” (94). Most significantly, she is writing in German, the language of the perpetrators. Another reason perhaps why the memoir has not become popular in the U�S� is the gender of the author and how she expresses her gender� As Ruth Klüger contends in her memoir weiter leben, National Socialism is the province of men - “ob man für oder gegen ihn gewesen ist: reine Männersache“ (Klüger 10). Men’s stories are perceived as the ones that count. The only early work by a female that gains both popular and critical acclaim is Anne Frank’s diary� It was characterized, especially in its initial editions, as that of a young, virginal girl - the ultimate innocent victim -with the title: Diary of a Young Girl� While Frank’s remarkable diary, which she prepared for publication before being arrested, is a work worthy of scholarly attention, its popularization and the ways in which it has become idolized as representing the voice of the ultimate innocent victim detracts from the more complicated and reflective memoirs of women like Klüger and Deutschkron. As a diary by a girl who did not survive, Frank’s diary holds a more privileged position in the perceived hierarchy of Holocaust testimonies over memoirs written decades later. This is because of both its contemporaneous recording and its author’s death� Generally, those considered the most powerful and iconic memoirs not only take place in Auschwitz or another camp, but also only reflect the male experience. As we know, men and women were separated in the camps and had different experiences� Filmmakers like Claude Lanzmann focus on male experiences� Scholars Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer have criticized Lanzmann’s treatment of women in his Shoah film, noting how Deutschkron and other women are marginalized. After filming more than three hours of interviews, she appears for about ninety seconds in a nine-hour film, mostly as a voice-over. Hirsch and Spitzer observe how she only appears once and never returns, as most men do: “Inge Deutschkron is little more than a disembodied voice: her narrative is largely presented in voice-over as scenes of Berlin and departing trains occupy the space of the screen; her face and name appear only at the very end of her brief account” (Hirsch and Spitzer 6)� With time, more female testimonies have appeared, including those in Steven Spielberg’s Shoah testimony project now housed at the University of Southern California as the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Project. The question remains if they will be given the same weight by historians and non-female readers as male-centered accounts� 68 Marjanne E� Goozé Deutschkron also points out that gender did not protect Jewish women of their class from demanding physical labor. Her mother worked the night shift in a radio battery factory. She tells a story of how gender norms aided her, but then resulted in a kind of sexual assault� She used female fashion to her advantage when she walked the long distance to and from her work at the notorious IG Farben plant in high heels, standing for ten hours, and deliberately injuring her knees. In order to be reassigned she had to see the factory doctor, who did not examine her knee, but who assaulted her by forcing her to submit to a gynecological exam - something she had never before experienced (71—73)� Deutschkron also speaks frankly of the threat of rape by Soviet soldiers� As apparently German women, she and her mother were subject to victimization by the victors� The final two reasons are the most significant in assessing her memoir and its reception� Deutschkron herself reveals how she survived by sometimes entering what Primo Levi terms the ambiguous “grey zone” of morality� 7 While it is clear that luck plays a large role in her and her mother’s survival, Deutschkron also explains how she was aided through two connections: through a Dr� Cohen and her boyfriend Hans Rosenthal. She had worked as a maid for a Dr. Cohen, who through his position within the Jewish community had arranged for her to get a job at Weidt’s factory, instead of having to work under much harsher conditions� While initially this plan was betrayed and she had to work for IG Farben for a while, she eventually was sent to Weidt’s. Most significantly, Dr. Cohen replaces her name on a deportation list with someone else’s� She states: “Die Jüdische Gemeinde hatte offenbar den Namen einer anderen Person auf die Liste setzen müssen” (92). This is the gravest of moral dilemmas found in the memoir, mostly because this incident is recounted without any reflection from the time of the composition of the work� Her advantage imperiled the life of another. Because the lists were compiled by the officials of the Jewish community on the orders of the Gestapo and because every Jew known to be in Berlin was eventually put on the list, Deutschkron as a recipient of this benefit may not be judged as directly causing the demise of another, but she is not completely innocent either� She accepted the favor� She also felt “entsetzlich schuldig” for acquiring false papers during the last months of the war, mentioning this when she sees a man in a bomb shelter wearing the star (173). Although she and her mother managed at times to work, find food and shelter with no identity papers or forged ones, in February 1945 they pretended to arrive in Berlin as Ella and Inge Richter, refugees from the East - as ethnic Germans whose papers were lost. With these official papers and the accompanying ration coupons, she writes: “Wir fühlten uns als Richters mit entsprechenden Dokumenten sicherer als jemals in den Jahren der Inge Deutschkron’s Memoir Ich trug den gelben Stern (1978) 69 Illegalität” (175)� Her legal position reversed itself with the end of the war; she dug up her buried identification card as the Jewish Inge Deutschkron (179). Later knowledge about the scope of the Holocaust only added to her trauma (182)� Deutschkron’s moral dilemmas and personal trauma need to be considered within the context of her entire life story� Readers should keep in mind that Deutschkron spent all of her professional life working at the nexus of West German and Israeli relations and repeatedly recounting her experiences� At the end of the book, while detailing her later life and how she came to work in Germany and later live in Israel, she sums up how she perceived the writing process as highly emotional and describes the power of her memories: Das ist die nüchterne Feststellung zum Abschluß eines Berichtes, den ich keineswegs in einer distanzierten Rückschau auf meine Berliner Jahre, die für mich Kindheit und Jugend umfassen, schreiben konnte. Die Erinnerung an alles, was mir damals an Gutem und Bösem widerfuhr, ist unabhängig von meinen Aufzeichnungen so stark und lebendig geblieben, daß ich auch heute nicht ohne Gemütsbewegung daran denken kann. Es ist darum kein Zufall, daß ich es erst dreißig Jahre später unternahm, meine Erlebnisse niederzuschreiben, und es hier in Israel tat. Es hört sich sicher banal an, wenn ich sage, daß Israel mir eine Heimat geworden ist. Tatsache ist, daß es mir das gibt, was ich noch nie in meinem Leben zuvor gekannt habe: Sicherheit und Geborgenheit, Gefühle, die sich nur entwickeln können, wenn man der Umwelt ohne Hemmungen und ohne Furcht begegnen kann� (196) Although the reader may at times perceive her narration as somewhat cold and dry, Deutschkron did not perceive it this way herself. At the end of the book she reveals the emotional toll the writing process took on her. Only after thirty years and while not living in Germany could she, who as a journalist wrote all the time, tell her own story. She concludes by claiming that Israel has become her home, offering her a previously unknown sense of security and peace, while her postwar time in Germany offered her only insecurity. Interestingly, her life and certainly her writing career have centered themselves in Germany after the publication of the memoir written in German for a German audience. Deutschkron’s story is an important one precisely because it does not immediately tug overtly at the heartstrings� It provides important information about survival underground and of the history of the persecution of German Jews� As a counternarrative to the archetypes of the innocent and optimistic victim or the male concentration camp prisoner, Deutschkron’s work offers an intricate narrative of survival among complex mature individuals, whose politics, nationality, outlook, gender, and narrative style may not accord with American expectations of an authentic Holocaust narrative. Yet for these very reasons, such a story is deserving of our attention. 70 Marjanne E� Goozé Notes 1 Page references in parenthesis, unless otherwise noted, refer to: Inge Deutschkron� Ich trug den gelben Stern. Munich: DTV, 1985. Original publication: Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1978. 2 In these interviews with Deutschkron she recounts much of what is in the memoir� 3 See Deutschkron, “Testimony.” 4 See the GRIPS program announcement at http: / / www.grips-theater.de/ programm/ spielplan/ produktion/ 19. 5 See, for instance: Sie blieben im Schatten. This book also includes a chapter on Otto Weidt. 6 I am not considering Anne Frank as a Jewish-German writer� Although she was born in Germany, she went to school in the Netherlands and wrote her diary in Dutch� 7 Primo Levi devotes a chapter to this concept of moral ambiguity in his book The Drowned and the Saved� Works Cited Berr, Hélène. The Journal of Hélène Berr. Trans� David Bellos� New York: Weinstein Books, 2008. Defiance. Dir. Edward Zwick. Bedford Falls Productions, 2008. Film. Deutschkron, Inge. “From the Testimony of Inge Deutschkron about Hiding in Berlin Throughout the War.” yadvashem.org. Yad Vashem Shoah Resource Center, n.d. 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