Bidspirit auction | ”Cold Pogrom” - the tragic

”Cold Pogrom” - the tragic story of German Jewry, which chose to believe that sanity would triumph over Nazi evil. Philadelphia, 1939 - First edition - inscribed and signed copy by the author - Cold Pogrom - ”Cold Pogrom” by Max L. Berges. Published by The Jewish Publication Society of America (JPS). Philadelphia, 1939 - First edition. English translation from the original German by Benjamin R. Epstein - inscribed and signed copy by the author: ”With my compliments to Mrs. Joseph Lippert, Max L. Berges”. The book follows the Seligman family, a middle-class Jewish family in Berlin, and describes the collapse of their world following the rise of the Nazis to power. This is a family which, despite all the warning signs that appeared throughout the 1930s - such as Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, which was distributed across Germany in millions of copies after he became Chancellor; antisemitic riots; boycotts; persecutions; the antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer; and racial laws that officially discriminated against Jews, chose to believe that all of these would not affect the educated German, and learned the hard way that it was precisely he who became the instrument of all those persecutions. Through the story of the Seligman family, Berges in fact documents the tragic story of German Jewry as a whole, which clung until the very last moment to the belief that reason, law, and culture would halt the tide. Even as the laws tightened and the streets grew more violent, they interpreted this as a temporary deviation, not as a moral revolution. They relied on “educated Germany, ” on a tradition of order and justice, and did not imagine that the state itself would become such a systematic and brutal mechanism of persecution. This trust, built over generations, shattered cruelly: what at first appeared to be a limited deterioration was revealed as a deliberate course of action, and reality struck them with a force that left no room for illusions, yet by then it was already too late. The title of the book, “Cold Pogrom, ” describes the phenomenon of denial among German Jews, who believed that time would take its course and that sanity would ultimately prevail, something that, in the end, did not happen. Max L. Berges wrote these words while the events were still fresh in his memory, in the first year after his emigration from Germany, while he was a refugee in Shanghai. The story of the Seligman family reached him through acquaintances, and he found in it a reflection of all that German Jewry had undergone. His anger and sorrow over what befell Germany and the Jewish community of which he had been a part are evident in every line. In his letter to the editor of the book, intended for its readers, dated November 21, 1939, he wrote: “Dear Editor, as early as 1928 I feared a National Socialist revolution in Germany. I saw it coming as surely as death comes to every living being. In those years, until January 1933, I seized every opportunity to plead with many Jews in Germany to be prepared and to fight. Generally, I preached to deaf ears. Even my own father did not listen to me, although I implored him to sell his factory and leave Germany before it was too late. A few months ago he died, a poor emigrant in Sweden. I knew all along that Hitler, once he came to power, would not hesitate to destroy the Jews in Germany by every means of a professional murderer. After 1933, I devoted all my time to the welfare of Jewish artists, to whom I belonged as an actor, and in May 1933 I was the first to organize Jewish concerts and dramatic performances for Jewish artists and for Jewish audiences only. I founded the Association of Jewish Artists in Hamburg, played a vital role in establishing the Jewish Cultural League in Hamburg, and assisted several Jewish artists in emigrating safely from Germany. By the end of 1935, I was in danger of being sent to a concentration camp. I left in haste and emigrated to Shanghai. After a year of hardship, I became manager of the world-famous ballroom ‘Casanova.’ But the outbreak of Sino-Japanese hostilities made me a refugee for the second time. Always accompanied by my wife, whose love and devotion to me are beyond all praise, I arrived in Manila. For 14 months, during which I first worked as a hotel manager and later as a manager in a five-and-ten-cent store, we lived there, although the tropical climate was difficult for us to endure. No one can imagine how happy we have been since our arrival last December in this great and free country. We would never have succeeded in reaching here without the kind assistance of Professor Albert Einstein and our friend Alfred Katzenstein, to whom we shall be forever grateful. Now my first book, Cold Pogrom, is about to be published. It is dedicated to the readers. It is your book, dear reader, not mine, for you too must contribute your part in the global struggle against injustice, intolerance,