On July 20, 1942 Benno Neuburger, a Jewish land investor from Munich stood in front of a panel of five judges in Berlin’s People’s Court. The main judge, Karl Engert, sitting in front of bust of Adolf Hitler glowered at him. “Were all of these slanderous remarks about the Führer written by you and put in the mail with the intention that others should see them?”

     “Yes,” admitted the defendant. “To let the world know of the torment and injustices we are facing as Jews in this country.”

     In a two hour “trial” Benno was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. The execution took place two months later in the converted woodshop of Berlin’s infamous Plötzensee prison.

     The records of Benno’s arrest, interrogation, trial, and execution sat unnoticed in the archives of the Nazi People’s Court until 1989 when, with the unification of east and west Berlin, they became accessible to a wider body of researchers. Then the myth of German Jewish passivity to the Holocaust was challenged by the discovery of numerous acts of resistance by German Jews. The actions of Benno Neuburger have drawn particular attention among German historians.

     Benno is my grandfather. I’ve spent the past six years researching and traveling to piece together the story of Benno, his wife Anna Einstein, and relatives from four German towns who either emigrated or, unable to do so, were murdered in camps and forts in occupied Europe.

     This is the story more broadly of their lives and Benno’s courageous and desperate acts of resistance.