Stranger in My Own Country: A Jewish Family in Modern Germany

A moving and unsettling exploration of a young mans formative years in a country still struggling with its past. As a Jew in postwar Germany Yascha Mounk felt like a foreigner in his own country. When he mentioned that he is Jewish some made anti-Semitic jokes or talked about the superiority of the Aryan race. Others sincerely hoping to atone for the countrys past fawned over him with a forced friendliness he found just as alienating. Vivid and fascinating Stranger in My Own Country traces the contours of Jewish life in a country still struggling with the legacy of the Third Reich and portrays those who inevitably continue to live in its shadow. Marshaling an extraordinary range of material into a lively narrative Mounk surveys his countrymens responses to the Jewish question. Examining history the story of his family and his own childhood he shows that anti-Semitism and far-right extremism have long coexisted with self-conscious philo-Semitism in postwar Germany. But of late a new kind of resentment against Jews has come out in the open. Unnoticed by much of the outside world the desire for a finish line that would spell a definitive end to the countrys obsession with the past is feeding an emphasis on German victimhood. Mounk shows how from the governments pursuit of a less apologetic foreign policy to the way the countrys idea of the Volk makes life difficult for its immigrant communities a troubled nationalism is shaping Germanys future.