An Unexpected Answer

A few weeks ago, one of my readers asked me an interesting question. “How did the Nazis find all the Jewish people, especially people like Herman’s family who didn’t practice the religion?” My first response was the usual, perhaps obvious, one. “The German’s were meticulous record keepers,” I explained. “They gathered information from city, church, and synagogue records of births, baptisms, bar mitzvahs, and marriages, which in the past routinely included religious affiliation.”

But even as I spoke, I realized that this answer was not adequate.

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