The Evil That Surrounds Us: The WWII Memoir of Erna Becker-Kohen

Kevin P. Spicer · Martina Cucchiara

sept 2017 · Indiana University Press

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In 1931, Gustav Becker and Erna Kohen married. He was Catholic and she was Jewish. Erna and Gustav had no idea their religious affiliations, which mattered so little to them, would define their marriage under the Nazis. As one of the more than 20,000 German Jews married to an "Aryan" spouse, Erna was initially exempt from the most radical anti-Jewish measures. However, even after Erna willingly converted to Catholicism, the persecution, isolation, and hatred leveled against them by the Nazi regime and their Christian neighbors intensified, and she and their son Silvan were forced to flee alone into the mountains. Through intimate and insightful diary entries, Erna tells her own compelling and horrifying story and reflects on the fortunate escapes and terrible tragedies of her friends and family. The Nazis would exact steep payment for Erna's survival: her home, her family, and ultimately her faithful husband's life. The Evil That Surrounds Us reveals both the great evil of Nazi Germany and the powerful love and courage of her husband, friends, and strangers who risked everything to protect her.

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Erna Becker-Kohen (1906–1987), a German Catholic of Jewish heritage, survived on the run in Hitler's Germany.

Martina Cucchiara is Assistant Professor of History at Bluffton University in Ohio.

Esther-Maria Nägele is the granddaughter of Erna Becker-Kohen. She studied geography at the University of Cologne.

Kevin P. Spicer, C.S.C., is James J. Kenneally Distinguished Professor of History at Stonehill College. He is author of Hitler's Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism and Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler's Berlin and editor of Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust.