Avraham Barkai

Avraham Barkai (born in 1921 in Berlin as Abraham Becker , died on 29. February 2020 at Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan) was a German-born Israeli historian and anti-Semitism researchers .

Life

Barkai was born into a strictly Orthodox family of Eastern European origin as the son of a Torah writer in Berlin's Scheunenviertel . He learned to read Hebrew in the cheder at the age of four, but then turned away from his father's faith at a young age. At the age of eleven he made the acquaintance of communist unemployed people, and that was how his political development began. In 1932 he witnessed police violence at a demonstration. Barkai only attended Jewish schools and was largely spared from anti-Semitic violence. He only found out about harassment from Nazi teachers through stories from comrades. Because of an expulsion by the Nazis, he had to live in the Jewish children's home in Beit Ahawah from 1935 to 1938 . Betty Rothschild was in charge of the home. Until 1936 he attended the Adass-Yisroel -Realgymnasium .

At the instigation of his parents, Avraham Barkai emigrated to Palestine on March 1, 1938 . He never saw his parents again, but learned that they were expelled only a few weeks later. In Palestine he trained as a farmer . As a member of Hashomer Hatzair , he dealt with fruit growing and Marxism-Leninism for two years . He was then sent to Negba , a kibbutz founded by Haschomer Hatzair members who had immigrated from Poland . But in 1941 Barkai left Negba to build a new kibbutz called Karkur between Tel Aviv and Haifa . There he met Shushke , who was also of German descent , whom he married in 1947 and with whom he had three children. In the kibbutz, Barkai Avraham worked as a day laborer in gardens and orchards. He also took on financial responsibility and contacts with the authorities for a year. From 1940 he was with his wife a member of the kibbutz Lehawot Ha-Bashan and worked there for 20 years in agriculture and youth education. From 1950 to 1953 he was delegated to Switzerland . In the spring of 1953 he returned to Karkur with his family and witnessed the clashes in the kibbutz as a result of the Cold War .

From 1963 Barkai studied history and economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . He encountered difficulties when enrolling because he could not finish his grammar school in Germany and did not have a corresponding diploma from the agricultural school. But the Hebrew University met him and gave him the status of a special student without a degree. In contrast to the free listeners, he was allowed to take exams and submit seminar papers and he even received grades. That is why he enrolled in the history and economics departments. Because of his good grades in history, he received special permission to continue studying as a full student. In the spring of 1967 he passed the final examination for the Bachelor of Arts in economics. In the summer of 1972 he passed the final examination in history and was able to continue his studies. 1973/74 Barkai enrolled as a master's student at the Hebrew University. At the end of 1973 he submitted his dissertation on the economic system of National Socialism to Walter Grab . This began his academic occupation with National Socialism and the economic policy carried out in the Third Reich . From 1967 to 1979 he was a part-time lecturer in economics and economic history at a college. Curiosity about the functioning of the economy under National Socialism was aroused more by studying economics and its theories than by studying German history. In 1974 he was allowed to undertake his dissertation; his doctoral supervisor was Charles Bloch . He suggested that he get in touch with the German historian Werner Jochmann in Hamburg. He found useful sources for his work in the Hamburg archive. In addition, Jochmann organized some discussions with the responsible scientists. Barkai also had conversations with prominent people from the Nazi era. These were important sources for his upcoming dissertation.

In 1977 he received his doctorate from Tel Aviv University on The Economic System of National Socialism: The Historical and Ideological Background 1933 to 1936 . In it, he presented the economic policy measures in the early years of the Third Reich as an internally consistent system. In 1988, a new edition of the study, expanded until 1945, appeared. Barkai also wrote a standard work on the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith , the largest association of German Jews from 1893 to 1938. With both works he became internationally known in the professional world.

Barkai, he conducted research at the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem and worked for the research center of the Yad Vashem Memorial . He also wrote individual studies on German-Jewish history in the 19th century, on the emigration of German Jews to the United States and on National Socialism. He is a member of the historians' commission founded by Deutsche Bank in 1997 to research the history of Deutsche Bank during the Nazi era and also conducts research at the Institute for Economic and Social History at the Free University of Berlin . In March 2003 he received an honorary doctorate from this .

Works (selection)

• The National Socialist Economic System. The historical and ideological background 1933–1936. Cologne 1977. (Dissertation)
• Jewish minority and industrialization. Demography, occupations and incomes of Jews in West Germany, 1850–1914. Tübingen 1988.
• The National Socialist Economic System. Ideology, theory, politics 1933–1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-596-24401-3 . (First edition in English, Tel Aviv 1986)
• From boycott to “de-Jewification”: The economic struggle of the Jews in the Third Reich 1933–1943. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988 (English 1989).
• Nazi Economics: Ideology, Theory, and Policy. New Haven Yale University Press 1990.
• Branching Out: German-Jewish Immigration to the United States 1820–1914. New York 1994.
• Hope and Fall: Studies on German-Jewish History of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Hamburg 1998.
• Contribution in: Walter Grab , Julius H. Schoeps (Ed.): Jews in the Weimar Republic: Sketches and Portraits. Darmstadt 1998
• (with Paul Mendes-Flohr ) New beginnings and destruction: 1918–1945 (= German-Jewish history in modern times. Vol. 4). Munich 2000.
• Defend yourself! The Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith 1893–1938. Munich 2002.
• Oscar Wassermann and Deutsche Bank: Bankers in Difficult Times. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52958-5 .
• Experienced and Thought: Memories of an Independent Historian. Wallstein, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0902-9 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Avraham Barkai in the catalog of the German National Library
• Avraham Barkai receives honorary doctorate from Freie Universität , press release from FU Berlin, April 2, 2003

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Hope and Downfall. 1988, p. 11.
2. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Experienced and Thought. 2011, p. 7 f.
3. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Experienced and Thought. 2011, pp. 15-21.
4. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Experienced and Thought. 2011, p. 30.
5. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Experienced and Thought. 2011, p. 31.
6. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Experienced and Thought. 2011, p. 41.
7. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Experienced and Thought. 2011, p. 45.
8. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Experienced and Thought. 2011, pp. 54-57.
9. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Experienced and Thought. 2011, pp. 57-64 f.
10. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Experienced and Thought. 2011, pp. 66-70.
11. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Experienced and Thought. 2011, p. 79 f.
12. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Experienced and Thought. 2011, pp. 81-83.
13. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Experienced and Thought. 2011, p. 87.
14. ↑ Avraham Barkai: Experienced and Thought. 2011, p. 89.
15. ↑ See e.g. B. Michael Wildt : Unwaveringly patriotic. Between anti-Semitism and Zionism: Avraham Barkai's impressive history of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith. In: The time . No. 47/2002.
16. ↑ Christoph Jahr: A broken story. The Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . October 16, 2002.
17. ↑ Miriam Rürup: Avraham Barkai: "Defend yourself!" Review in: Sehepunkte . Issue 3 (2003), No. 7/8.