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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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War with Iran puts the US-Israel alliance at grave risk
The Iran war is strategically sound yet politically unsupported — an unstable foundation for a gamble that could reshape the Middle East. That creates danger for Israel, which needs the support of an American public that is rapidly drifting away.
For decades, the country’s greatest strategic asset has not been its military technology or intelligence capabilities — spectacular as these are — but rather the political, diplomatic and military backing of the United States. That relationship has not been merely transactional. It was supposed to rest on shared values and deep public support across the American political spectrum.
If that support erodes or disappears, Israel’s strategic environment will fundamentally change. To be blunt: it will not be able to arm its military. This creates a paradox. A campaign that has so far demonstrated extraordinary value for the Jewish state also stands a risk of fundamentally weakening it.
An alliance at its strongest
The conflict has showcased the depth of the current U.S.–Israel alliance. To many observers, and critically to Israel’s enemies, the operation has underscored not only Israel’s capabilities but also the reality that it stands alongside the world’s most powerful state.
The strikes have projected deep into Iranian territory, revealed astonishing intelligence penetration, and destroyed or degraded key threats. Israel’s enemies across the region have already been weakened by previous rounds of fighting since Oct. 7, and the current operation has reinforced the impression that Israel can reach its adversaries wherever they operate.
Moreover, Iran’s regime has managed to isolate itself to the point where most Arab countries are in effect on the side of Israel and the U.S. That projection — of an unbreakable and strong alliance – may ultimately be the most important strategic element of this war.
But therein lies the rub.
The political foundations of American support for Israel are eroding, which means the very element that currently strengthens Israel’s deterrence — American participation — may also be the one most at risk.
A just war, unjustified
Americans do not understand why their country is at war.
A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted at the start of the conflict found only 27% of Americans supported the U.S. action, while 43% opposed it. Other surveys show similar results, with roughly six in ten Americans against the military intervention.
In modern American history that is highly unusual. Most wars begin with a “rally around the flag” moment when public support surges. Even conflicts that later became controversial — from Afghanistan to Iraq — initially enjoyed majority backing.
This one did not — in part because the case for it has not been made clearly to the public.
That error is compounded by years of polarization in American politics; declining trust in institutions and leadership; and the record of President Donald Trump, who has spent years spreading conspiracy theories and demonstrating a remarkable indifference to factual truth. It is no exaggeration to say that many Americans do not believe a word he says – which is perhaps unprecedented.
When a president with that record launches a war, at least half the country assumes the worst. Even if the strategic logic is sound, the credibility deficit remains.
The tragedy is that the war is, in fact, eminently justifiable. The Islamic Republic has long since forfeited the moral legitimacy that normally shields states from outside force. It brutally suppresses its own population, jailing and killing protesters, policing women’s bodies, and crushing dissent with an apparatus of repression. Its foreign policy is not defensive but revolutionary. Through proxy militias it has destabilized Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, as well as the Palestinian areas, in some cases for decades.
The regime has pursued nuclear weapons through a series of transparent machinations, deceptions and brinkmanship. Negotiations have repeatedly been used as delaying tactics while enrichment continued. Any deal that relieved sanctions would not simply reduce tensions; it would also inject new resources into a system dedicated both to repression at home and aggression abroad — one that is despised by the vast majority of its own people, as murderous dictatorships inevitably will be.
There is a doctrine in international law known as the Responsibility to Protect — the principle that when a state systematically brutalizes its own population, the international community may have the right, even the obligation, to act. By that standard, the Iranian regime has been skating on thin ice for years.
But with this clear rationale left uncommunicated, the politically dangerous perception has spread that the U.S. was reacting to Israel rather than acting on its own strategic judgment.
A perilous future
If Americans come to believe that Israel caused a costly war that they did not support in the first place, the backlash could be severe.
For centuries, one of the most persistent antisemitic tropes has been the accusation that Jews manipulate powerful states into fighting wars on their behalf. The suggestion that Israel can pull the U.S. into conflict feeds directly into that mythology. Once such perceptions take hold, they can be extremely difficult to reverse.
Even people who reject antisemitism outright can absorb a softer version of the same idea: that American interests are being subordinated to Israeli ones. In a political environment already marked by growing skepticism toward Israel, that perception risks deepening the erosion of support that has been underway for years.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemed to inadvertently feed such notions by suggesting in recent days that the U.S. had to attack Iran because Israel was going to do so “anyway,” and then America would have been a target. It was a short path from that to conspiracy theorists like Tucker Carlson blaming Chabad for the war.
A future Democratic president, facing a base that appears to have abandoned Israel, may feel far less obligation to defend it diplomatically or militarily. Even a Republican successor could prove unreliable if the party continues its drift toward isolationism.
That likelihood is compounded by studies showing that a large part of the U.S. Jewish community itself no longer backs Zionism. That process is driven by Israel’s own policies, including the West Bank occupation and the deadly brutality of the war in Gaza.
So the very war that is showcasing the best the U.S.-Israel alliance has to offer is also at risk of fundamentally damaging that partnership. Particularly if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — the rightful object of much American ire — manipulates the Iran campaign into an electoral victory this year, the alliance’s greatest success could also be its undoing.
The post War with Iran puts the US-Israel alliance at grave risk appeared first on The Forward.
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Report: Iran’s New Military Plan Is Regime Survival Through Regional Escalation
Members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) attend an IRGC ground forces military drill in the Aras area, East Azerbaijan province, Iran, Oct. 17, 2022. Photo: IRGC/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – After last year’s devastating conflict with the United States and Israel, Iranian leaders have reportedly adopted a major strategic shift aimed at expanding the war across the Middle East to secure the regime’s survival, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Previously, Iran responded to foreign strikes with limited, targeted reprisals. The new doctrine abandons that approach, aiming instead to escalate the conflict regionally, particularly against Gulf Arab states and critical economic infrastructure. The goal is to disrupt the global economy and pressure Washington into shortening the war.
This decision followed the twelve-day war with Israel in June 2025, during which Israeli and US strikes eliminated senior Iranian military leaders, destroyed key air defense systems, and severely damaged nuclear facilities. In response, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—before his elimination early in the current conflict—activated a strategy designed to maintain continuity even if top commanders were neutralized.
Central to this approach is the so-called “mosaic defense” doctrine: a decentralized military structure in which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operates through multiple regional command centers. Each center can conduct operations independently, allowing local commanders to continue fighting even if national leadership is incapacitated. This makes the military apparatus more resilient to targeted strikes.
Analysts cited by the Wall Street Journal suggest that Tehran’s calculation is to make the conflict costly enough for all parties to force the US and its allies into a diplomatic resolution.
However, the plan carries enormous risks. By escalating attacks on regional states and international economic interests, Iran could provoke a broader coalition against itself. Despite prior military losses, Iranian forces retain the capability to launch drone and missile strikes, maintaining their influence over the ongoing conflict.
For Iranian leaders, the immediate priority remains unchanged: the survival of the regime, even if it requires a major regional escalation.
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Katz Warns Lebanon to Disarm Hezbollah or ‘Pay a Heavy Price’
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz and his Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias make statements to the press, at the Ministry of Defense in Athens Greece, Jan. 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki
i24 News – Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Saturday warned Lebanon’s leadership that it must act to disarm Hezbollah and enforce existing agreements, cautioning that failure to do so could lead to severe consequences for the Lebanese state.
Speaking after a high-level security assessment with senior military officials, Katz directed a message to Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, saying Beirut had committed to enforcing an agreement requiring Hezbollah’s disarmament but had failed to follow through.
“You pledged to uphold the agreement and disarm Hezbollah — and this is not happening,” Katz said. “Act and enforce it before we do even more.”
The meeting took place in Israel’s military command center and included Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and other senior defense officials, as Israel continues operations on multiple fronts.
Katz emphasized that Israel would not tolerate attacks on its communities or soldiers from Lebanese territory.
“We will not allow harm to our communities or to our soldiers,” he said. “If the choice is between protecting our citizens and soldiers or protecting the State of Lebanon, we will choose our citizens and soldiers — and the Lebanese government and Lebanon will pay a very heavy price.”
The defense minister also referenced Hezbollah’s leadership, warning that the group’s current chief could lead Lebanon into further destruction.
“If Hassan Nasrallah destroyed Lebanon, then Naim Qassem will destroy it as well,” Katz said.
Katz stressed that Israel has no territorial ambitions in Lebanon but said it would not accept a return to the years in which Hezbollah launched repeated attacks on Israel from Lebanese territory.
“We have no territorial claims against Lebanon,” he said. “But we will not allow Lebanese territory to again become a platform for attacks against the State of Israel.”
He concluded with a warning to Lebanese authorities to take action against Hezbollah before Israel escalates its response.
“Do and act before we do even more,” Katz said.