Hitler, My Neighbor Memories of a Jewish Childhood, 1929-1939

An eminent historian recounts the Nazi rise to power from his unique perspective as a Jewish boy growing up in Munich with Adolf Hitler as his neighbor.

Edgar Feuchtwanger came from a prominent German Jewish family: the only son of a respected editor, and the nephew of best-selling writer Lion Feuchtwanger. He was a carefree five-year-old, pampered by his parents and his nanny, when Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, moved into the building across the street in Munich.
 
In 1933 his happy young life was shattered. Hitler had been named Chancellor. Edgar’s parents, stripped of their rights as citizens, tried to protect him from increasingly degrading realities. In class, his teacher had him draw swastikas, and his schoolmates joined the Hitler Youth.
 
From his window, Edgar bore witness to the turmoil surrounding the Night of the Long Knives, the Anschluss, and Kristallnacht. Jews were arrested; his father was imprisoned at Dachau. In 1939 Edgar was sent on his own to England, where he would make a new life, start a career and a family, and try to forget the nightmare of his past—a past that came rushing back when he decided, at the age of eighty-eight, to tell the story of his buried childhood and his infamous neighbor.

Edgar Feuchtwanger was born in Munich in 1924 and immigrated to England in 1939. He studied at Cambridge University and taught history at the University of Southampton until he retired in 1989. His major works include From Weimar to Hitler, Disraeli, and Imperial Germany 1850–1918. In 2003 he received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for promoting Anglo-German relations.

Bertil Scali is a French journalist and writer. He wrote and co-directed a TV documentary about Edgar Feuchtwanger’s childhood in Munich, and is the author of Villa Windsor.