Q&A with Georgette Bennett

 

 

 

 

Georgette Bennett is the author of the new book Half Jew – Full Life: The Unlikely Journey of a Voluntary Jew from Nazi Persecution to the American Dream. Her other books include Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By. She is also a sociologist and a journalist.

 

Q: What inspired you to write your new book about your relative Pips Phillips?

 

A: Pips was an important figure in my life. He and his wife met my parents and me at the pier when we arrived in New York City as stateless refugees. My father died within a year of our arrival and Pips became a kind of surrogate father. 

 

He was a character – unfiltered, wildly inappropriate, funny; and passionate about a Jewish identity that he had constructed in the belly of the Nazi beast. When he died at age 93, he left me the rights to his story. And what a story it is! 

 

The son of an Aryan mother and Jewish father born in interwar Berlin, he could have been spared the worst of the Nazi war on Jews. But the very week that the Nuremberg laws were enacted, he chose to become a bar mitzvah. 

 

Even with the label “Jew” now permanently stuck on him, he would have been spared deportation so long as he was living with an Aryan parent. However, he gave up that protection when he fell in love with a full Jew and convinced her to go into hiding with him under the noses of her persecutors. 

 

What followed was a cinematic series of adventures, both terrifying and farcical. And a story that’s different from most Holocaust stories in four ways: Pips was a voluntary Jew; he could have been spared the losses he suffered. While most Berlin Jews were deported, he was one of 6,000 who chose to take their chance by going underground. 

 

He was arrested four times and escaped three times. He could have escaped a fourth time but realized that he had nowhere to go in a city that was largely destroyed and a Jewish population that was largely deported or killed.   

 

Finally, Nazis didn’t just persecute him; on several occasions, Nazis saved his life. In the end, it wasn’t just the story that inspired me, but the unexpected paradoxes that it contained.

 

Beyond Pips himself, his story meshes with my own story. I’m a child of the Holocaust, born into a bombed-out apartment building in Budapest. Most of my family in both Poland and Hungary were murdered and, although my parents miraculously survived, they went through all the horrors of the Nazi machine. 

 

That background inspired the work to which I’ve devoted the last 33 years of my life: interreligious relations, human rights, and conflict resolution. Prior to that, I had a groundbreaking career as a sociologist/criminologist. 

 

I’ve always had an interest in the links between religion and violence, and all my books have explored the various forms of violence that we do to each other. In the case of this book, I looked at violence through the lens of a single person’s life story.

 

The second part of the book focuses on Pips’s new life in America – a life as unlikely as his life in Berlin. Starting out as a waiter and bicycle messenger, and never having owned as camera in his life, he ends up co-owning the largest photo agency in the world. 

 

That brings him into the orbit of many of the celebrities of the day – and lands him in a Playboy layout surrounded by a bevy of nude models. 

 

There were some seedy aspects to Pips’s later years and I was torn about whether to include them in the book. So, I consulted his psychiatrist. He told me that Pips would not have wanted me to whitewash his story. He contextualized the sordidness of these episodes as echoes of early wartime experiences and a need for human contact and comfort.

 

Finally, Pips felt he had nothing to contribute to the world, except his story. And I felt it was my responsibility to tell that story. This story is his legacy.

 

Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: For his entire life, Pips’s most fervent wish was to be recognized as a full Jew, not a half Jew. Hence, the title “Half-Jew – Full Life.” The subtitle, “The Unlikely Journey of a Voluntary Jews from Nazi Persecution to the American Dream” is a mouthful. But it captures the complete arc of his life.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: Pips left me dozens of audiotapes that contained his sessions with his psychiatrist. His therapy consisted of telling of his life story and working through the guilt he felt about choices he had made. 

 

I had those tapes transcribed while Pips was still alive so that he could review them and make corrections. The transcripts were my primary source material, along with letters and various other documents. 

 

Memory can be flawed, so I fact-checked everything I could to ensure that the book would be accurate. I omitted anything I couldn’t verify.  I also did research about Nazi Germany to provide context for Pips’s experiences and create a sense of place. 

 

In short, I needed to be both a detective and a historian – neither of which I am by training nor profession! However, I am a Ph.D. sociologist and a former journalist – and that gives me a set of tools that came in very handy in the writing of this book.

 

I was surprised to learn that very little has been written about the experiences of those whom the Nazis classified as Mischling first degree – especially those who identified as Jewish. Beyond the novelty of the story itself, I was glad to break some new ground in a well-trod canon.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book, especially at a time of increased antisemitism?

 

A: There are many takeaways: First, a cautionary tale of how quickly a country can turn from normalcy into the worst kind of autocracy; the short leap from dehumanization through hate speech to genocide.

 

Then there’s the question of identity: its meaning and the price human beings pay to hold on to their identity. Specifically, what is Jewish identity? 

 

Then there’s the human tendency to be in denial as one’s world collapses. 

 

Perhaps the most important takeaway is the dilemmas one faces in trying to survive. Pips never saw himself as a hero. He saw himself only as a survivor. But Holocaust trauma follows survivors and can ripple through one’s entire life.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Through various channels including the two nonprofit organizations that I founded – the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding and the Multifaith Alliance – I’m involved in a number of Israeli/Palestinian initiatives, Muslim-Jewish initiatives, and Black-Jewish initiatives. 

 

These have brought me into contact with many compelling figures and involved me in back-channel work about which I’d like to write. 

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Yes. I am pleased to announce that I will be speaking about Half Jew – Full Life at the New York Public Library on Thursday, February 19, 2026, and at New York City’s 92NY on March 10, 2026. You can learn about additional talks and events by visiting my website: www.bennettny.com

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb