With My Own Eyes: The Autobiography of a Historian

by Jacob Katz, Ann Brenner (Translator), Ziporah Brody (Translator)

In this lovely and moving memoir, the world's most distinguished scholar of Jewish social history recalls a life that in many ways encapsulates the arduous path of the remnant of East European Jewry through the cataclysmic events of this century. After a childhood in the crumbling Hapsburg Empire, Jacob Katz left his native Hungary to attend the famous Yeshiva of Pressburg. He later entered the University of Frankfurt, where in 1934 he received the last doctorate granted to a Jew in Nazi Germany. Heeding ominous undercurrents, Katz immigrated to Palestine-Israel in 1936. There he witnessed the birth of the new state and the growth of the prestigious Hebrew University. With My Own Eyes, guided by the hand and eye of the consummate historian, poignantly recreates the atmosphere of the period in which the author has lived.

183 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 1995

Reviews

[Agnes Kelemen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a super interesting memoir, because Katz remains a historian while writing his own memories and reflects on the problematic nature of memoirs as historical sources. The milieu he came from was not what people imagine as typical Hungarian Jewish environment: he came from an Orthodox Jewish family from the countryside; this also makes this book interesting. And last, but not least it is well-written, just as the scholarly books by Katz.