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Andreas E. Mach’s Monument to Memory: Jüdische Familienunternehmer in Hitlers München
A store damaged during Kristallnacht. Photo: German Federal Archives via Wikimedia Commons.
In an age of slogans and shortcuts, Andreas E. Mach has written a meticulous, unflinching book. Jüdische Familienunternehmer in Hitlers München (“Jewish Family Entrepreneurs in Hitler’s Munich”) is not only a history of businesses — it is a map back to a city that once existed, and a ledger of how it was unmade.
Mach’s canvas is Munich from the 19th century through the aftermath of 1945. His method is documentary and patient: city directories and business registers; police and tax files; contemporary newspapers; memoirs and family papers. From this archive he reconstructs the families who shaped Munich’s modern economy — department stores like Bamberger & Hertz, fashion and textile manufacturers, breweries and beverage firms, banks, and the great art dealerships (Bernheimer, Drey, Heinemann, Thannhauser, Rosenthal, Helbing). He shows how these Jewish-founded enterprises fueled jobs, style, philanthropy, and civic leadership — and how, step by step, they were boycotted, expropriated, “Aryanized,” and erased from the city’s commercial map.
The book opens with a foreword by Dr. h.c. Charlotte Knobloch (July 2024), president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria and former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Her message is clear: remembrance is responsibility amid rising antisemitism.
Mach is a political scientist and historian from a southern German entrepreneurial family, with studies in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands (M.A.) and in the U.S. (M.P.I.A.), early work in investment banking, and, since 2005, the founding of the international family-enterprise forum ALPHAZIRKEL.
A photographic essay explains the cover image: in March 1933, Munich lawyer Dr. Michael Siegel was beaten, forced barefoot through the city, and made to wear a placard. Mach places that humiliation inside a system that very quickly moved from intimidation to dispossession. He then widens the lens: a historical overview traces the growth of Munich’s Jewish community — from 1,206 members in 1852 to more than 11,000 by 1910 — its institutions (the 1887 main synagogue on Herzog-Max-Straße with roughly 2,000 seats; Ohel Jakob; prayer houses and charities), and its contributions to a capital that became internationally respected in art and culture. He notes that by 2022 the community again counted roughly 11,000 members, and that Jewish life is once more visible in the cityscape with the 2006 synagogue and cultural center at Jakobsplatz.
Mach’s narrative is careful about complexity. He documents assimilation and civic engagement — business leadership, philanthropy, even sports (Kurt Landauer’s presidency at FC Bayern) — but he also records the persistence of antisemitism before 1918, debates over Zionism, and the arrival of poorer Eastern Jews whose visibility fed prejudice. He includes wartime service and suspicion side by side: around 100,000 Jews served in the German army in World War I; the humiliating Judenzählung of Nov. 1, 1916 sought to prove Jews shirked the front, yet subsequent figures showed similar front-line rates (and decorations) to non-Jews — but the results were not published at the time. Mach quotes and paraphrases contemporary Jewish voices who felt they were fighting “on two fronts” — for the country and for equal rights.
The revolutionary crisis of 1918–1919 is presented as prelude rather than detour. Mach recounts the proclamation of the Free State of Bavaria on Nov. 8, 1918, by Kurt Eisner; his assassination on Feb. 21, 1919; the brief council republics; and the brutal “white terror” that followed. He names the murdered and condemned — Gustav Landauer beaten to death after arrest; Eugen Leviné executed; Ernst Toller sentenced; Erich Mühsam imprisoned — and records the double standard in sentencing: perpetrators from the Reichswehr and Freikorps often received lenient treatment while revolutionaries were abused and, in some cases, murdered. The period also ushers in figures who will define the next era: Rudolf Heß, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Dietrich Eckart, and Adolf Hitler’s first steps in 1919 under Captain Karl Mayr, including the antisemitic “Mayr letter.” Mach’s point is cumulative: explanations, enemies, and habits of looking away were practiced in these years, and Munich became the stage on which they would later be performed.
When Mach turns fully to “Hitler’s Munich,” the argument is anchored by street-level facts. He documents the April 1, 1933 boycott — photographed, staged, and effective as intimidation. He details the demolition of the main synagogue in June 1938 on Hitler’s order: the contractor (Leonhard Moll), the speed (within a month), and the compensation (200,000 Reichsmarks) to remove what Hitler called an “eyesore.” He tracks the Nov. 9–10, 1938 pogrom in Munich with specific images and captions (smashed windows at the Bernheimer gallery on Lenbachplatz; the boycott poster at Bamberger & Hertz on Kaufingerstraße), and notes that nearly all adult Jewish men were deported to Dachau in the aftermath. Individual fates punctuate the narrative — among them the arrest of banker Emil Krämer. Administrative theft is made visible: Jews were compelled to declare assets; by 1938, Jewish losses in Germany totaled roughly 12 billion RM; in Munich alone Mach cites roughly 600 million RM in real estate and nearly 150 million RM in securities and balances registered in 1938. On countless forms, one formula recurs: “The property falls to the Reich.”
Mach also reproduces the texture of “Aryanization” as it appeared to the public. He cites a Völkischer Beobachter advertisement of July 25, 1938 announcing that the porcelain, glass, and household goods firm “formerly Martin Pauson” had been transferred into “German ownership.” He shows how city paperwork could continue to list Jewish firms even as their owners were being forced from homes into Judenhäuser, or into hiding. At Munich’s liberation on April 30, 1945, only 34 Jews were found in hiding in the city. Mach references research on Jews who attempted to survive underground in Munich and Upper Bavaria, the dangers they and their helpers faced, and the gap between postwar stories of universal assistance and the record of denunciation and greed.
The book’s architecture makes its case. After the narrative chapters — “Jüdisches Leben in München – ein historischer Überblick bis 1918” (“Jewish Life in Munich – A Historical Overview Until 1918”), “Das München der Revolution – Prélude des Holocaust” (“The Munich of the Revolution – Prelude to the Holocaust”), “Hitlers München: die ‘braune’ Stadt” (“Hitler’s Munich: the ‘brown’ city”), “Arisierung und Restitution” (“Aryanization and Restitution”), and the detailed account of November 1938 — Mach opens into registers readers can use: a directory of businesses affected during the pogrom; a reprint-based listing of Jewish business owners recorded by the trade police in 1938; and studies of Nazi art plunder in Munich. He then offers sector and firm profiles: leading art dealers (A.S. Drey, Heinemann, Thannhauser, Bernheimer, Helbing, Caspari, and others); selected family companies (including bank and retail houses); Jewish lawyers; and a long section on fashion and textiles (department stores, manufacturers, tailors, wholesalers). A distinct contribution is the inclusion of Lotte Bamberger’s memoir (with German translation), which threads one family’s trajectory through the commercial and moral topography Mach has drawn.
Throughout, Mach refuses euphemism. He writes with moral clarity but without sermonizing: he lays out the documents, then the consequences; he names who benefited, who signed, who looked away, and who helped. He proves that the story of Jewish family enterprise is not ancillary to Munich’s identity — it is central. When those families were expelled, the city did not simply “change”; it lost part of itself.
On a personal note, I met Andreas once — and that was enough. Charismatic and purposeful, he cuts through the noise with a quiet insistence on truth at a moment when too many remain silent or choose the wrong side as antisemitism rises worldwide. For years I heard about him from one of my closest friends, Emil Schustermann, who spoke of Andreas with steady admiration. This past summer I was fortunate to meet the legend in person. The integrity you feel in his book is the integrity you feel across a table: steady, unsentimental, anchored in facts and responsibility.
Jüdische Familienunternehmer in Hitlers München is, finally, a usable history. It helps citizens, students, and leaders see Munich differently: storefronts as testimonies, plaques as prompts, absences as questions. It closes the distance between numbers and names, between street addresses and fates. And it leaves readers with the task the book so plainly sets — to remember precisely, to teach honestly, and to stand, now, against the same old hatred in its new clothes.
Eli Verschleiser is a NYC-based entrepreneur, financier, real estate developer, and investor. In his philanthropy, he is Chairman for Our Place, among other nonprofit organizations that provide support, shelter, and counseling for troubled Jewish youth. He is a frequent commentator on political and social services matters and can be followed on X (formerly Twitter): @E_Verschleiser
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Israeli Christian Leader: Tucker Carlson ‘Doesn’t Want the Truth,’ Endangers Christians Elsewhere by Lying About Israel
Tucker Carlson speaks on first day of AmericaFest 2025 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Dec. 18, 2025. Photo: Charles-McClintock Wilson/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Firebrand podcaster Tucker Carlson drew a barrage of heat from Israelis after claiming he was “detained and interrogated” during a brief stop at Ben Gurion Airport on Wednesday, with former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett calling him “a chickens**t” and “a phony” and an Israeli Christian leader describing him as “an enemy of Israel” for lying about the country’s treatment of Christians.
Shadi Khalloul, founder of the Israeli Christian Aramaic Association and a former Knesset candidate, accused the former Fox News host-turned-far-right conspiracy theorist of “destroying Christian-Jewish relations” all over the world and “endangering the persecuted Christian community in the Middle East” by portraying Israel as hostile to Christianity.
“The truth is exactly the opposite,” he said, describing Christians in Israel as enjoying freedom and equal opportunity.
In Khalloul’s telling, Carlson is choosing scenes and storylines that travel well online, then skipping the reporting that might complicate them.
“Tucker Carlson doesn’t want the truth. The truth doesn’t exist in his lexicon,” Khalloul told The Algemeiner.
Earlier this month, Khalloul invited Carlson to a tour of Christian communities and holy sites in Israel, including a meeting with his brother-in-law, the head of the Maronite Church of Israel, but received no response.
I invited @TuckerCarlson to take advantage of his upcoming visit to Israel and meet our thriving Christian community – to see with his own eyes the people and realities he speaks about so confidently and so often on his platform.
This letter was sent a week ago to every email… pic.twitter.com/lcBiecCtUx
— Shadi khalloul שאדי ח’לול (@shadikhalloul) February 17, 2026
“If he [Carlson] was really willing to help, he would come interview us, hear our views, our narrative,” Khalloul said, adding the podcaster would then be able to “expose the oppression of Christians in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Syria, and under the Palestinian Authority by a radical Islamic propaganda agenda,” rather than “talking about me and my community as being persecuted by Israel.”
He pointed to anti-Christian violence in Syria, including a recent church bombing in Damascus, and to the arrest of Maronite official Moussa el-Hajj in Lebanon after he was arrested by Hezbollah operatives at the Lebanese border carrying money and medicine sent from Israel’s Christian community.
Christian communities all over the region are continuing “to shrink while we here are thriving and increasing in numbers and happily living in Israel,” Khalloul said.
Khalloul’s comments came after Carlson spent only a few hours in Israel on Wednesday for an interview with US Ambassador Mike Huckabee and chose not to leave the Ben Gurion Airport facility before flying out of the country.
Bennett described the polemical commentator’s visit as a staged drive-by meant to give him a basis for future anti-Israel commentary.
“Tucker Carlson is a chickens**t,” Bennett posted on the social media platform X.
Tucker Carlson is a chickenshit.
The guy who’s been spouting lies about Israel for the past two years,
landed today at Ben Gurion airport,
took a quick picture in the logistics zone,
tweeted it to pretend he’s actually IN Israel (so he can later claim that he’s a serious… https://t.co/ZWZ8aY7BAG— Naftali Bennett נפתלי בנט (@naftalibennett) February 18, 2026
Carlson, who has been “spouting lies about Israel for the past two years,” didn’t even step foot in the country, Bennett wrote, and instead posted a photo taken in the airport logistics zone to “pretend he’s actually IN Israel (so he can later claim that he’s a serious reporter who toured Israel).”
He “whined” and “made up a story that he’s being supposedly harassed by our security (didn’t happen),” he continued.
“Next time he talks about Israel as if he’s some expert, just remember this guy is a phony!” Bennett concluded.
Carlson’s version, carried by outlets including the New York Post and the Daily Mail, said airport security took passports and “hauled” his executive producer into a room and interrogated him about the interview Carlson had just recorded with Huckabee.
Huckabee pushed back publicly, writing on X: “EVERYONE who comes in/out of Israel (every country for that matter) has passports checked & routinely asked security questions.”
Israel’s Airports Authority also rejected Carlson’s account, saying he and his team were not “detained, delayed, or interrogated” and were only asked “a few routine questions” in a side room inside the VIP lounge “solely to protect their privacy.”
“No unusual incident occurred,” the authority said, adding that it “firmly rejects any other claims.”
Carlson’s airport detention story was “another lie” by “someone who is always inventing stories,” according to Khalloul.
Carlson’s own platform promoted the trip as a fact-finding mission. In a monologue titled “We’re headed to Israel. Here’s why,” his site said he was traveling to “get answers to questions that no one will answer.”
His show page also carried an episode billed as “Israel’s Purging of Christians From the Holy Land and the Plot to Keep Americans From Noticing,” part of a series focused on Christian treatment by the “US-funded Israeli government.”
Commentators on social media pointed out that Carlson’s posting “Greetings from Israel” from an airport logistics zone, then flying out, does not amount to visiting the country in any ordinary sense.
Carlson’s brief trip to Israel contrasts with his interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2024, when he spent multiple days in Russia praising the country on video and infamously marveling at the use of locks on shopping carts — a common feature in Europe.
The podcaster’s visit to Israel also differed from his trip to Doha in December, when he interviewed Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani and revealed his plans to purchase a home in the country. Qatar has been a long-time backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its Palestinian offshoot Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.
Carlson has ramped up his anti-Israel content over the last year, according to a study released in December by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), which tracked the prominent far-right podcaster’s disproportionate emphasis on attacking the Jewish state in 2025.
In September, for example, the podcaster appeared to blame the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Jesus and suggest Israel was behind the assassination of American conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
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Israel’s High Court sides with egalitarian prayer advocates in long-running Western Wall dispute
(JTA) — Israel’s highest court has delivered a unanimous rebuke to state and municipal authorities over long-stalled plans to upgrade the Western Wall’s egalitarian prayer section, intensifying a dispute that has come to symbolize broader tensions over religious pluralism in Israel.
In a decision issued Thursday, an expanded seven-justice panel of the High Court of Justice ordered the national government and the Jerusalem Municipality to move forward with building permits needed for repairs and infrastructure improvements at the Ezrat Israel prayer platform, the area designated for mixed-gender and non-Orthodox worship south of the main Western Wall plaza.
The ruling imposes strict procedural deadlines aimed at ending what the justices described as years of exceptional delay following a 2016 deal to permit egalitarian prayer at the holy site. Acceding to pressure from haredi Orthodox politicians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu froze the deal the following year, triggering a legal petition by Judaism’s Reform and Masorti/Conservative movements, Women of the Wall and Israeli religious pluralism advocacy groups.
Today, the groups say, area remains difficult to access, lacks adequate facilities, and does not provide meaningful proximity to the Wall’s stones — conditions they view as discriminatory toward non-Orthodox worshippers.
“For nine years, the state and the municipality have been dragging their feet and refusing to promote an egalitarian, respectful, and accessible alternative in the Ezrat Israel,” Attorneys Ori Narov and Orly Erez-Likhovski, who represent the Reform Movement in Israel, one of the petitioners, said in a statement to Times of Israel. “Now, the court is ordering an end to the foot-dragging.”
The court did not revisit legal questions surrounding prayer rights at the site, emphasizing that the decision focused on the “practical implementation” of matters already litigated. Instead, the justices targeted bureaucratic obstacles that have repeatedly slowed or blocked construction, particularly disputes involving planning approvals and the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The court ruled that existing government approvals are still valid and that any remaining sign-off from the Antiquities Authority must be decided within 14 days, removing key grounds for further delays. After that, the state must file new building permit requests within 14 days. If officials don’t respond within 45 days, it will count as a rejection and the state must appeal. The state and city must also update the court within 90 days.
The decision arrives amid renewed friction at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site and a focal point of Israel’s long-running struggle over religious authority. It also comes just one day after Israeli police detained two leaders of Women of the Wall during the group’s monthly Rosh Chodesh prayer service marking a new Jewish month.
The activists were briefly held after conducting a Torah reading near the site. Women of the Wall, which campaigns for expanded women’s prayer rights, has clashed for years with authorities over practices permitted under non-Orthodox traditions but restricted in the gender-segregated main plaza.
Pluralism advocates hailed the court’s intervention as a significant victory, noting both the unanimity of the decision and the ideological diversity of the judicial panel.
“An expanded panel of the Supreme Court, including conservative jurists, has unanimously ruled that the Government of Israel and the Jerusalem Municipality must put an end to their foot dragging and get to work,” said World Zionist Organization Vice Chairman Yizhar Hess, a senior representative of the Masorti/Conservative movement, in a statement.
Hess accused authorities of maintaining an “endless, creative litany of excuses” to block repairs necessary to ensure direct access to the Wall’s stones at the egalitarian platform. “This is a victory for those who believe in Jewish pluralism in Israel and that every Jew from every stream should have the equal opportunity to pray according to their custom at our holiest site,” he said.
The post Israel’s High Court sides with egalitarian prayer advocates in long-running Western Wall dispute appeared first on The Forward.
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Australian Bar Shut Down for Displaying Posters of Netanyahu, Putin, Trump in Nazi-Like Uniforms
Adolf Hitler in Nuremberg in 1938. Photo: Imperial War Museums.
A live music bar and cafe in Australia was shut down by local police on Wednesday for displaying posters that depict world leaders and others, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, wearing Nazi-like uniforms.
The Dissent Cafe and Bar in Canberra Central said in a Facebook post that ACT Policing, the community policing arm of the Australian Federal Police, shut down the venue for two and a half hours on Wednesday night. Police said they were investigating a complaint about possible hate imagery relating to five posters in the venue’s window display. A scheduled performance at the bar and cafe was also canceled because of the shutdown.
ACT Policing said in a statement on Thursday that it declared the cafe a crime scene and officers would investigate whether there was a breach of new Commonwealth law about hate symbols. Police noted that they asked the venue’s owner to remove the posters and he refused.
“Officers attended the premises and had a discussion with the owner, with officers seeking to remove the posters as part of their investigation into the matter. The owner declined this request and so a crime scene was established,” read the police statement. “Five posters were subsequently seized and will be considered under recently enacted Commonwealth legislation regarding hate symbols.”
The Dissent Cafe and Bar had displayed in its front windows posters depicting Netanyahu, Trump, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, US Vice President JD Vance and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk in Nazi-like uniforms. The posters were created by the artist group Grow Up Art and underneath them were signs in the window that said “Sanction Israel” and “Stop Genocide.” Grow Up Art displayed the same images as part of a billboard poster campaign last summer and they are also sold on t-shirts. The artist group nicknamed the men in the posters collectively as “The Turd Reich,” a play on the Third Reich, the name for the Nazi dictatorship in Germany under Adolf Hitler’s rule.
Dissent Cafe and Bar has defended the artwork, saying it is “clearly and obviously parody art with a distinct anti fascist [sic] message.”
“In what is obviously harassment the ACT police have declared a crime scene at Dissent and tonight’s gig is unfortunately canceled,” Dissent Cafe and Bar wrote on Facebook when the closure happened on Wednesday.
The posters have since been placed back in the windows of the live music bar, but the images are now covered with the word “CENSORED” in red. ACT Policing said on Thursday they are still investigating the posters and are also “seeking legal advice on their legality.”
“ACT Policing remains committed to ensuring that alleged antisemitic, racist, and hate incidents are addressed promptly and thoroughly, and when possible criminality is identified, ACT Policing will not hesitate to take appropriate action,” police added.