Tod oder Taufe

de Fritz Heymann

Based on six lectures given in Amsterdam in 1940 by the author, a German Jewish journalist who emigrated to the Netherlands and died in Auschwitz in 1942. The manuscript, entitled "Marranos-Chronik", is now in the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Surveys the activities of the Inquisition and the expulsions from Spain and Portugal. Discusses the persecution of Conversos who continued to practice Judaism secretly and were denounced by the local population. Claims that ca. 75,000 descendants of Conversos exist all over the world. An appendix, by Schoeps, describes the life of Heymann, focusing on his sufferings during the Nazi regime.