Born Jewish

Eminent Marxist intellectual recounts class struggles in Nazi-torn Belgium. Marcel Liebman was one of post-war Europe’s preeminent Marxist intellectuals. This his memoir of Nazi-occupied Belgium is both an elegy and an indictment. Liebman’s account of his childhood in Brussels under the Nazi occupation explores the emergence of his class-consciousness against a background of resistance and collaboration. He documents the internal class war that has long been hidden from history: how the Nazi persecution exploited class distinctions within the Jewish community and how certain Jewish notables collaborated in a systematic programme of denunciation and deportation against immigrant Jews who lacked the privileges of wealth and citizenship.. Born Jewish is a fierce powerful and subtle account of the Liebman family’s struggle to survive persecution and terror a story rich with insight humour and lyricism.