The Pity of It All: A Portrait of Jews in Germany 1743-1933 by Amos Elon

The purpose of this text is to try to understand how Germany could attempt to exterminate its Jewish population during the Nazi period. Through individual stories, beginning with Moses Mendelsohn in the 1780s and ending with Hannah Arendt, it traces the history of assimilation and the Jewish contribution to German public and cultural life.