Robbing the Jews: The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933–1945 - Hardcover

“Martin Dean’s book is the first fully comprehensive study on the confiscation of Jewish property in the Holocaust and will set the standard for future research and analysis. In the complicated field of robbing and spoliation it connects important archival findings with a masterly knowledge of even remote research literature, cogently integrating the process of confiscation into the general history of the Holocaust. Therefore I warmly recommend Dean’s study as a compulsory work for scholars, students, and all readers interested in the field of Holocaust history.” -Frank Bajohr, Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg, Germany

“This book is surely the most comprehensive and clear guide in English to the manifold ways by which the Nazi regime, its agents, and its allies plundered the European Jews. Not only an admirable overview, but also a depressing case study in the crushing effects of bureaucratic ingenuity.” -Peter Hayes, Northwestern University

“Few, if any scholars in the English-speaking world, can equal Martin Dean’s record of intense study of the most appalling primary sources generated by the most thorough and most minutely recorded genocide in human history. It was, after all, a very German genocide and hence murder by bureaucratic machinery also involved the greatest theft in human history. Dean looks at all the ways that the German state stole Jewish property and shows the importance of hitherto neglected ones. Blocking the use of a person’s bank account and limiting withdrawals slowly squeezed the individual’s ability to act and ultimately to live at all. The horrible stories of pauperization and humiliation of the Jews under the Nazis make almost unbearable reading precisely because they are so real, so ordinary, and so terrible.” -Jonathan Steinberg, University of Pennsylvania

"...an incredible base for future research. Highly recommended." -Choice

"Dean's command of the historiography and his expert ability at mining evidence is impressive." -Michael Berkowitz, American Historical Review

"...impressively wide-ranging study." -Tim Cole, Economic History Review

"...a scholarly overview based on substantial archival research and a synthesis of a wide range of secondary literature, fills a major gap." -Richard Breitman, HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

"Drawing on almost a decade’s worth of systematic archival research, Dean’s account will undoubtedly be required reading for all scholars interested in the despoliation of European Jewry between 1933 and 1945 for many years to come." -East European Jewish Affairs

"Robbing the Jews adeptly demonstrates the usefulness of financial documents in studying the Nazi regime and its persecution of Jews, especially for those already versed in the history of this period...the text is a carefully crafted, helpful study of confiscation politics."
German Studies Review, Kara Ritzheimer, Oregon State University

Robbing the Jews reveals the mechanisms by which the Nazis and their allies confiscated Jewish property; the book demonstrates the close relationship between robbery and the Holocaust. The spoliation evolved in intensifying steps. The Anschluss and Kristallnacht in 1938 reveal a dynamic tension between pressure from below and state-directed measures. In Western Europe, the economic persecution of the Jews took the form of legal decrees and administrative measures. In Eastern Europe, authoritarian governments adopted the Nazi program that excluded Jews from the economy and seized their property, based on indigenous antisemitism and plans for ethnically homogenous nation-states. In the occupied East, property was collected at the killing sites - the most valuable objects were sent to Berlin, whereas items of lesser value supported the local administration and rewarded collaborators. At several key junctures, robbery acted as a catalyst for genocide, accelerating the progression from pogrom to mass murder.