"Someone Had to Punish the Perpetrators"

  • The Revenge of the Jews, the Failure of German Justice after 1945, and the Myth of German-Jewish Reconciliation

The first comprehensive account of Jewish acts of retribution after the Holocaust - and an answer to the question of why there were so few of them.

As a descendant of Holocaust survivors, Achim Doerfer sets out in search of an emotion that remained oddly subdued – and not just in his family –  after the end of the Nazi regime and its colossal crimes: the desire for retribution, for revenge.

It’s not by chance that the premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglourious Basterds in Tel Aviv was met with great cheering: finally an artistic fantasy that portrayed Jews as powerful. Yet resistance and acts of revenge did happen in reality as well: in the ghettos of Eastern Europe, in Jewish partisan groups, among the British Army’s Jewish Brigade. But, considering the vast mass murder committed by the Nazis, there should have been many more.

Achim Doerfer traces these stories of resistance and revenge to counter a culture of remembrance and commemoration that has cemented the status of Jews as victims in all our minds. Especially since the failure of German justice after 1945 was no less colossal: Doerfer meticulously enumerates how the perpetrators were systematically spared and millions of victims never received any justice.

This brilliant, angry, and thought-provoking book comes to the bitter realization that, because of the mass reintegration of the perpetrators, the reconciliation between Germans and Jews, much invoked and acclaimed by mainstream society, remains a shameful charade to this day.

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  • Publisher: Kiepenheuer&Witsch
  • Release: 07.10.2021
  • 368 pages
  • ISBN: 978-3-462-05088-2
Cover Download Irgendjemand musste die Täter ja bestrafen
Irgendjemand musste die Täter ja bestrafen
Hale Doerfer-Kir

Achim Doerfer

Achim Doerfer, born in 1965, studied law and philosophy and works as a lawyer. His grandmother and mother are among the few who survived the Holocaust in Germany and remained there after 1945. His brother emigrated to Israel in 1999 and has since become a rabbi there. Doerfer is a member of the board of the Jewish Community of his hometown and has been engaged in interreligious dialogue for decades. He publishes articles and books on Judaism and anti-Semitism among other subjects.