"During the German occupation of the Netherlands, 1940 to 1945, all Jews were ordered to register the religion of their grandparents. The Reichskommissar appointed the young lawyer Hans Calmeyer to adjudicate "doubtful cases." Calmeyer used his assignment to save at least 3,700 Jews from deportation and death, dwarfing the number saved by Schindler's famous rescue operation."--Back cover.

"Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza (1632-1677) was a radical free thinker who led a life guided by strong moral principles despite his disbelief in an all-seeing God. Seen by many--Christians as well as Jews--as Satan's disciple during his lifetime, Spinoza has been regarded as a secular saint since his death. Many contradictory beliefs have been attached to his name: rationalism or metaphysics, atheism or pantheism, liberalism or despotism, Jewishness or anti-Semitism. However, there is no question that he viewed freedom of thought and speech as essential to an open and free society. In this insightful account, the award-winning author Ian Buruma stresses the importance of the time and place that shaped Spinoza, beginning with the Sephardim of Amsterdam and followed by the politics of the Dutch Republic. Though Spinoza rejected the basic assumptions of his family's faith, and was consequently expelled from his Sephardic community, Buruma argues that Spinoza did indeed lead a Jewish life: a modern Jewish life. To Heine, Hess, Marx, Freud, and no doubt many others today, Spinoza exemplified how to be Jewish without believing in Judaism. His defense of universal freedom is as important for our own time as it was in his." --

Memoirs of a Jew, intended for children. Jacobsen was born as Ruth Katzenstein in the village of Frankenberg, Germany. In 1937 the family moved to Düsseldorf; in 1939 they fled to the Netherlands. Under the German occupation, the family first lived in the village of Oud Zuylen; in 1941 the Dutch resistance movement hid Ruth in Amsterdam and her parents in Roermond. Jacobsen describes the people who hid and helped her. Several years after the war her parents committed suicide; in 1953 she emigrated to the USA. Includes illustrations, and collages made by Jacobsen from family photographs.

Text: English (translation) Original Language: German

"This volume attempts to trace the philosophical development of one of the greatest philosophers of all times. It is the first attempt of its kind in English and its timely appearance coincides with the recent increase of interest in Spinoza’s philosophy in Anglo-American philosophy. Spinoza’s fame—or notoriety—is due primarily to his posthumously published magnum opus, the Ethics, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, to the 1670 Theological-Political Treatise. Few readers take the time to study his early works carefully. If they do, they are likely to encounter some surprising claims, which often diverge from, or even utterly contradict, the doctrines of the Ethics. Yet, though these claims reveal some tension between the early works and the Ethics, there is also a clear continuity between them. Spinoza wrote the Ethics over a long period of time, which spanned most of his philosophical career. The dates of the early drafts of the Ethics, as documented in his earliest letters, seem to overlap (or almost overlap) with the assumed dates of the composition of the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and the Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being, and precede the publication of Spinoza’s 1663 book on Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy. For this reason, it seems that a study of Spinoza’s early works (and correspondence) could illuminate the nature of the problems Spinoza addresses in the Ethics, insofar as the views expressed in the early works help us reconstruct the development and genealogy of the Ethics." --

Overview: The name Erasmus of Rotterdam conjures up a golden age of scholarly integrity and the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, when learning could command public admiration without the need for authorial self-promotion. Lisa Jardine, however, shows that Erasmus self-consciously created his own reputation as the central figure of the European intellectual world. Erasmus himself--the historical as opposed to the figural individual--was a brilliant, maverick innovator, who achieved little formal academic recognition in his own lifetime. What Jardine offers here is not only a fascinating study of Erasmus but also a bold account of a key moment in Western history, a time when it first became possible to believe in the existence of something that could be designated "European thought."--

Greenman was born in 1910 in London to a Jewish family; in 1913 he and his widowed father settled in Rotterdam. Greenman failed to escape to England when the war began, and in 1940 was caught by the German occupation. He lost his British identity papers and, because of bureaucratic procrastination on the part of Dutch officials and of the Swiss consulate that represented British interests, could not prove his British nationality. He was deported to Westerbork in October 1942, with his wife and son. In January 1943 the family was sent to Birkenau, where Greenman's wife and child were killed immediately, and he was used for slave labor. He was also a victim of "medical experiments" in the camp. In September 1943 he was transferred to the Monowitz camp, and in January 1945, after a death march to Gleiwitz, he was transported to Buchenwald, where he was liberated. After the war he settled in Britain. His father survived, since he was married to a non-Jew.

Pp. 1-7 contain the story of Greenman, told in his own words. A Jew born in London, he lived with his wife and small son in Rotterdam. In 1942, disregarding his British nationality, the Nazis sent him and his family to Westerbork and then to Auschwitz, where his wife and son were killed. In January 1945 Greenman was sent on a death march and transport to Buchenwald, where he was liberated by the American army. After the war he returned to England. Startled by British ignorance of the Holocaust, he began to recount his experiences to students. Pp. 8-13 contain guidelines for teachers using Greenman's story for Holocaust education.