When the Nazis came, not everyone divided neatly into 'good' neighbors and 'bad'

When the Nazis came, not everyone divided neatly into ‘good’ neighbors and ‘bad’
Lessons from my father’s German village about those who helped the Jews.
By Mimi SchwartzUpdated April 8, 2021, 1:00 p.m.
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The author's father, Arthur Loewengart, returning to Rexingen c. 1970.Loewengart family.
His letter came from South Australia, out of the blue. He wanted to thank me for my book about Christian and Jewish neighbors in the tiny German village of Rexingen, where my father’s family was from. “Your father was right,” his letter assured me, “we all got along before Hitler.”
This man, Max Sayer, was 88 and had grown up five houses from where my father’s family had lived for generations. Max’s Catholic family moved into their house in 1937, a few months after my uncle Julius, the last of our Jewish family to leave Nazi Germany, had sold our family’s house and fled to America.

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