Thomas Paul Bernstein’s insight­ful mem­oir details his family’s his­to­ry in Ger­many and his life grow­ing up half-Jew­ish under the Third Reich. He begins by explor­ing the rise of anti­semitism and of Hitler and the Nazi par­ty in Ger­many, also weav­ing in the sto­ry of his par­ents and extend­ed fam­i­ly. While the his­tor­i­cal sur­vey is a bit too sweep­ing, Bern­stein hits his stride when he delves into the Nazis’ treat­ment of half-Jews and Jew­ish vet­er­ans of World War I. 

Bernstein’s father, Paul, was a proud Jew­ish Ger­man and World War I vet­er­an who mar­ried his wife, Johan­na, a Protes­tant, in 1932. In 1934, Johan­na gave birth to their daugh­ter, Bar­bara, fol­lowed a short time lat­er by Thomas. As Hitler and the Nazis gained con­trol of Ger­many and began per­se­cut­ing Jews, Paul and Johan­na strug­gled to sur­vive finan­cial­ly and pro­vide for their fam­i­ly. ulti­mate­ly lead­ing them to divorce in 1939 in an attempt to secure a job for Johan­na, whose prospec­tive employ­er would not hire her if she remained mar­ried to a Jew. The deci­sion to divorce trag­i­cal­ly opened the door for Paul’s even­tu­al depor­ta­tion. As Bern­stein explains, Jews in mixed mar­riages were less like­ly to be deport­ed to death camps, a fact Paul and Johan­na could not have fore­seen at the time they sought a divorce. Life changed for­ev­er for the Bern­stein fam­i­ly after the divorce. Paul and Johan­na were forced to live apart and could only meet in secret, risk­ing severe pun­ish­ment if they were caught togeth­er. Both of Bernstein’s par­ents suf­fered under Nazi con­trol, finan­cial­ly and emo­tion­al­ly. Excerpts from his mother’s writ­ings about her strug­gles to keep her chil­dren safe dur­ing the Holo­caust, all while being sep­a­rat­ed from her beloved hus­band add mov­ing insight to this heart­break­ing sto­ry. Bern­stein vivid­ly describes the trag­ic fate of World War I vet­er­ans such as his father. He notes that World War I vet­er­ans expe­ri­enced pro­tec­tion from depor­ta­tion for a time, but by late 1943 that pro­tec­tion was erod­ing, and Bernstein’s father was deport­ed in 1944 to a con­cen­tra­tion camp and lat­er to Auschwitz, where he was murdered. 

As a half-Jew whose father was a World War I vet­er­an, Bern­stein is able to pro­vide the read­er with poignant and unique tes­ti­mo­ny about the actu­al expe­ri­ence of ​“mis­chlings,” Jew­ish vet­er­ans, and the dis­crim­i­na­tion and cru­el­ty unleashed on his par­ents as a result of their mixed marriage.