Before 1918 the South Slav lands, which were to comprise Yugoslavia, did not share a common history. Divided for centuries between Ottoman and Habsburg spheres of influence, the various peoples developed their own distinct identities and particular traditions. With 'the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes at the end of World War I, East and West met and gave birth to a complex new multinational state'.

As anyone who has stood before a painting by Gustav Klimt will readily attest, Vienna's golden age literally glittered with gold. It began to glow in the 1850s and shone brightest from the turn-of-the-20th century until those pistol shots were fired in Sarajevo in 1914. Of course, no one knew then they had been living in a golden age. They would realize that only later, after the gold had been tarnished, stripped, and finally stolen.

When we speak about the Kindertransport, we refer to the rescue of approximately 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic to the United Kingdom between 1938 and 1939.

Although Centropa conducted more than twelve hundred interviews in fifteen countries during our decade of gathering oral histories (2000–2009), we never carried out our project in Germany itself. We did, however, interview four people who spent their childhood there.

The German Jewish Source Book is the first in a series of Centropa readers on Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe.

With essays, timelines and general histories on twentieth century German history, this volume also offers the stories of four German Jews who describe growing up in Weimar Germany and who fled their country just in time.