Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village

by Mimi Schwartz

Mimi Schwartz grew up on milkshakes and hamburgers—and her father’s boyhood stories. She rarely took the stories seriously. What was a modern American teenager supposed to make of these accounts of a village in Germany where, according to her father, “before Hitler, everyone got along”? It was only many years later, when she heard a remarkable story of the Torah from that very village being rescued by Christians on Kristallnacht, that Schwartz began to sense how much these stories might mean. Thus began a twelve-year quest that covered three continents as Schwartz sought answers in the historical records and among those who remembered that time. Welcomed into the homes of both the Jews who had fled the village fifty years earlier and the Christians who had remained, Schwartz peered into family albums, ate home-baked linzertorte (almost everyone served it!), and heard countless stories about life in one small village before, during, and after Nazi times. Sometimes stories overlapped, sometimes one memory challenged another, but always they seemed to muddy the waters of easy judgment.

 

Small stories of decency are often overlooked in the wake of a larger historic narrative. Yet we need these stories to provide a moral compass, especially in times of political extremism, when fear and hatred strain the bonds of loyalty and neighborly compassion. How, this book asks, do neighbors maintain a modicum of decency in such times? How do we negotiate evil and remain humane when, as in the Nazi years, hate rules?

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Germany, Holocaust, European History

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Mimi Schwartz is an award-winning author of memoir, personal essay, and narrative nonfiction. She is Professor Emerita in Writing at Richard Stockton University in New Jersey--and also writes about and teaches creative nonfiction nationwide and abroad.

Reviews

[West Hartford Public Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Fascinating view of understanding a small Black Forest town!" --patron

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is difficult to categorize this work. It is part memoir, part history, part travelogue and one could throw in a bit of philosophy and religion. The author weaves together past and present in her search for answers to the question of the relationship between Jews and 'gentiles' in a small German town before and during WW II. Most were good neighbors with families being good neighbors for generations. It was neighbor helping neighbor whatever the religion until Nazis came to town. Even then some neighbors helped neighbors until those Jews remaining in town after Poland was invaded were transported to their deaths by one means or another.

[Claudia Damon · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a really remarkable book. The author tells stories and includes her reactions and brings us along with the ambivalence, nuance, emotion she experienced while hearing, thinking about and writing about what she discovered. We all exist along a continuum of good and some live on a continuum of evil. The spectrum goes from white to black, but like that good old Bell Curve, there is no black or white for most of us. I see a lot of value in asking ourselves what we would have done or not done had we been there. And why. We might learn something about ourselves…. All the ethical theories of morality are on display in this book. So many good discussions to be had!

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I seriously doubt I would have picked up on this book had I not attended a women's poetry reading at Stockton College in April 2008. Following the reading, Mimi Schwartz held a reading/booksigning. I liked what I heard well enough to later order the book.
Touching on a side of World War II Germany that was largely overlooked until recently, Mimi's book held up well enough to recommend it both to others and to a book discussion group.

[Carmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful look into a world that has gone by. Mimi's father keeps telling her about the village he grew up in before World War II. How the Christian families helped the Jewish families. Mimi decides to see how much of his memories are accurate and how much is false. She learns that it is half and half, but the good half gives her hope that humanity is still there.

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will add that "Herr Stoller" is my dads cousin and that the town is actually Rexingen Germany, where for 200 years my paternal family lived and worked.