How was it possible for Jews to survive in Nazi Germany? In this carefully researched book, the Melbourne-based author Charlotte Kahane provides surprising and provocative answers.

Contrary to post-war received opinion, ordinary Germans did rescue some Jews. And while the Nazis were ruthless with full Jews, they became entangled in their obsessive drive for racial purity. Their attempts to define and exclude 'Jewish blood' came up against the frustrating real world of assimilated Jews, half Jews, and Jews in mixed marriages.

The survival of Jewish-Christian families and the emergence of Christian rescuers of Jews throws into sharp relief the behaviour of the Protestant and Catholic churches. Ms Kahane finds that the churches were mute about the plight of the Jews, except when Nazi measures threatened to affect baptised Jews of mixed descent. In a world of state-sponsored, anti-Jewish terror persecution on the streets and mass deportations to death camps the Berlin Jewish Hospital remained a strange haven. But the churches provided no sanctuary- their leaders were bystanders to genocide.

As a teenager, the author herself survived due to the heroic protection rendered by a German family. Her riveting personal story, as well as her extensive research, illuminates the paradox of the continuance of humanitarian feeling in the midst of utter inhumanity.