Invisible Walls : A German Family Under the Nuremberg Laws

Ingeborg Hecht's father, a prosperous Jewish attorney, was divorced from his titled German wife in 1933 two years before the promulgation of the Nuremberg laws -- and so was deprived of what these laws termed "privileged mixed matrimony." He died in Auschwitz. His two children, called "half-Jews, " were stripped of their rights, prevented from earning a living, and forbidden to marry. In this book, Hecht writes of life under these circumstances, sharing heartbreaking details of her personal life, including the death of her father -- who had been forbidden all contact with his family -- after he was deported in 1944; and her fears of perishing coupled with the shame of faring better than most of her family and friends. Hecht also offers a rich description of life after the war, when the government attempted "restitution" to the survivors.