Bernard Wasserstein is Harriet & Ulrich E. Meyer Professor Emeritus of Modern European Jewish History at the University of Chicago.
[Wasserstein] reconsiders the impossible situation of the ‘Jewish
councils’ in Western Europe through a reconstruction of the life of
Gertrude van Tijn, a leading member of Amsterdam’s council. As
Wasserstein reminds readers, too much of the debate about the
Jewish councils has been carried out in the terms proposed by
Hannah Arendt, who emphasized complicity and culpability and failed
to notice, much less understand, the extraordinary courage and
creativity employed by activists like van Tijn. Wasserstein’s
textured account recreates the tense and essential interactions
with Nazi authorities as well as Allies and potentially friendly
enemies; the unbearable daily emotional algorithms of rescue work,
including choosing whom to exempt from deportation; and the
inevitable rivalries and betrayals. But it also evokes the
absolutely vital sustaining power of passionate friendships and
loves in cataclysmic times.
*New York Times Book Review*
In the life of Gertrude van Tijn, Bernard Wasserstein has found the
perfect subject for examining the appalling options that faced
Jewish leaders under Nazi rule… Wasserstein tells van Tijn’s story
beautifully, weaving the historical background almost seamlessly
into the narrative. While leaning on her unpublished autobiography,
he corroborates her activity using documents from numerous
archives. His evaluations are judicious and humane.
*Literary Review*
Absorbing… Wasserstein’s book is a powerful indictment, if another
were needed, of the world’s failure to respond to the plight of
Europe’s Jews in the 1930s and 40s… The Ambiguity of Virtue is a
valuable, accessible book. It introduces readers to a fascinating
woman, reminds us that the central experience for European Jews in
the 1930s and even into the 40s was of being trapped in a
nightmarish bureaucracy that made the figure of the refugee sadly
central to political life, and allows us to conclude that ambiguity
need not undo the possibility of virtue. As thousands of child
refugees from Central America arrive at the U.S. border, van Tijn’s
example is sadly only too relevant.
*Open Letters Monthly*
[A] sober, scholarly and often fascinating book… Partly a
biography, partly a history of the destruction of Dutch Jewry… Was
van Tijn, who died in the U.S. in 1974, a Nazi dupe or a champion
of her people? Wasserstein’s carefully argued, compassionate
narrative suggests that at different points in her life she was
both.
*The Australian*
The story of Gertrude van Tijn is an amazing tale, but as
Wasserstein’s magnificent biography shows yet again: in wartime
anything was possible.
*Het Parool*
Wasserstein reexamines [Van Tijn’s] life and weaves her story
beautifully into the fabric of Holocaust history… This book is an
important contribution to the field of Holocaust studies, as it
shows the ethical complications that Jewish leaders faced,
especially leaders involved with refugees… Wasserstein eloquently
articulates why we should remember Gertrude van Tijn.
*PopMatters*
Whoever thought ‘virtue’ could be ambiguous? But the fraught period
during which the book’s protagonist, Gertrude van Tijn, was active
ensured that matters were rarely straightforward, as Bernard
Wasserstein so adeptly relates.
*The Tablet*
In an attempt to understand her motives and actions, Wasserstein
takes a close look at the background and behavior of his subject.
He gives readers not just a personal portrait of van Tjin, a
bourgeois German Jew who embraced Zionism as a young woman and
acquired Dutch nationality upon her marriage in 1920, but also a
stark picture of the plight of European Jews before and during
World War II… A scholarly, thoroughly documented work that
elucidates historical issues and explores moral ones.
*Kirkus Reviews*
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