Můj soused Hitler - vzpomínky jednoho židovského dítěte – Feuchtwanger Edgar (2015)

The period of the rise of Nazism and its subsequent terror remains an inexhaustible source of testimonies from its opponents and victims. The memories of historian Edgar Feuchtwanger, nephew of the famous German writer Lion Feuchtwanger, which he first wrote down at the age of 88 and published with the help of Bertil Scali, are another surprising example: in a narrative whose impact is heightened by the present tense, the author returns to the time when he lived with his family in Munich, in close proximity to Adolf Hitler, from the age of five to fourteen. Especially for young readers – but not only for them – Edgar's sincere account as a Jewish boy, whose everyday joys of childhood, experienced in the safety of home and at other beloved places in Bavaria, surrounded by the love of parents, a nanny, and a wide family, are gradually infiltrated by the threat of danger associated with the neighbor across the street, which Edgar initially does not understand: while in the early years of school he boasts of drawings dominated by the swastika or a photograph of Hitler, a few years later he finds himself alone among classmates – members of the Hitler Youth – with a feeling of conscious hatred, fully identified with his Jewish roots. Most members of the extended...