An American in Hitler's BerlinBook ann: University of Illinois
From Catherine Collomp [mailto]catherine.collomp@orange.fr[/mailto]
We are pleased to announce the publication of the following book:
An American in Hitler's Berlin, Abraham Plotkin's Diary, 1932-33, edited and with an introduction by Catherine Collomp and Bruno Groppo, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2009, 206 pages, Paperback edition.
This is the first published edition of the diary of Abraham Plotkin, an American labor leader of immigrant Jewish origin (an ILGWU organizer) who lived in Berlin between November 1932 and June 1933. A first hand account of the Weimar Republic's final months and the early rise of Nazi power in Germany, Plotin's diary focuses on the German working class, the labor movement, and the plight of German Jews. Plotkin investigated Berlin's social conditions with the help of German Social Demcoratic leaders, whose analyses of the situation he records alongside his own.
Compared to the writings of other American observers of the Third Reich, Plotkin's diary is unique in style, scope and time span. The author is especially attentive to socioeconomic factors, providing an alternative view from the left that stems from his access to key German labor and socialist leaders. Chronologically the diary reports on the moment when Hitler's seizure of power was not inevitable and when leaders on the left still believed in a different outcome of the crisis, but it also includes Plotkin's account of the complete destruction of German labor in may 1933.
Catherine Collomp, Bruno Groppo.