Bound upon a wheel of fire

A study of six prominent Jews (Richard Willstaetter, Nobel laureate chemist; Max Warburg, banker; Hans-Joachim Schoeps, right-wing Jewish youth leader; Bella Fromm, Berlin society columnist; Robert Weltsch, Zionist editor; and Rabbi Leo Baeck) who remained in Germany during the early years of Hitler's regime. Notably, none of them were regarded by the Nazis as adversaries; Schoeps even sympathized with the Nazi goals. Their patriotism contributed to their decisions to stay in Germany, as well as a feeling that there was important Jewish communal work to be done, a hope that highly-placed connections would protect them, and an inability to understand that their world had turned upside down and the Nazi anti-Jewish policy would not be a temporary phenomenon. The "Kristallnacht" pogrom shook their hopes for Jewish-German coexistence in Hitler's Germany and caused some of them to emigrate. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)