
De-Integrate!: A Jewish Survival Guide for the 21st Century by Max Czollek
A controversial, best-selling polemic in Germany, De-Integrate! is a battle cry against Jewish assimilation into a dominant culture that seeks to paint over the past—and a handbook for minorities on how to embrace their difference and resist rising nationalism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and racism. Max Czollek’s De-Integrate! is a polemical, often humorous examination of Jewish life in contemporary Germany that speaks to the position of minorities the world over. Rooted in sociological theory, the book offers an engaging and approachable critique of Germany’s much-lauded traditions of memory culture and Vergangenheitsbewältigung—its “successful” negotiation of its Nazi past. Although modern Reunified Germany presents itself as having overcome historical trauma and integrated its now diverse, multicultural society, Czollek argues that this public image is merely a “Theater of Integration”: showcasing those minoritized stories to bolster Germany’s positive self-image, while sidelini