SOURCE: Feuchtwanger, Edgar. Review of My German Question, by Peter Gay. Journal of Jewish Studies 51, no. 2 (autumn 2000): 366.

In the following review, Feuchtwanger argues that My German Question adds an insightful personal narrative to the existing body of historical studies on Berlin in the 1930s.

Peter Gay's account of his boyhood in Nazi Germany [My German Question] is written with the sensitivity for hidden meanings and implications one would expect of him. His motive in writing his autobiographical reminiscences was, however, not only to recall and analyse his experiences, but to put on record his views on two central and connected problems. One of them is encompassed in the title of the book: an account of how he arrived at his later, relatively positive, but by no means unambiguous feelings towards Germany and Germans. The second is to reply to those who accuse assimilated German Jews of self-delusion in...