Overview

From Berlin to the Bronx, from Holocaust survivor to American success story, this riveting, fast-paced biography traces the extraordinary life of Gary “Pips” Phillips who defied the odds at every turn. With an Aryan mother and Jewish father, Pips could have escaped much of the Holocaust’s horrors. Instead, he made a fateful decision at age 13 to become a bar mitzvah just as the Nuremberg Laws were enacted, effectively choosing to be labeled a Jew under Nazi rule. Pips’s wartime experience is marked by daring escapes, improbable rescues, and survival while hiding deep within Nazi Berlin. Captured four times, he escaped thrice, choosing to remain in Nazi custody the fourth time as there was nowhere to run in bombed-out Berlin. At his place of confinement, he met his future wife, Olga Horvath, who had been imprisoned after surviving Auschwitz and the Death March to Bergen Belsen. After their marriage in chaotic post-war Berlin, they emigrated to the USA to start a new life.  Arriving in New York with nothing, Pips rose from waiter to co-owner of the world’s largest photo agency—despite never owning a camera. Unlike Pips, Olga was unable to escape the shadow of her Holocaust experiences, and in a horrifying twist, she threw herself off the roof of their gleaming luxury high-rise after more than 50 years of marriage, leaving Pips grief-stricken, but also able to reinvent himself one more time. This cinematic life brims with chance, love, loss, resilience, and reinvention, culminating in a poignant exploration of Jewish identity, memory, and legacy. Pips’s story is a tribute to the power of choice, endurance, and the human will to belong.

Full Product Details

9781949846744

Table of Contents

Reviews

Praise for Half-Jew—Full Life “I could not put down the book. I wept and laughed and cried as the story of this little boy emerged from the vivid writing of Georgette Bennett. Bennett’s story paints a picture of a hero, a gentleman, a survivor, and a truly determined soul whose whole life was survival, a flag against the demons of history, the horrors of dictatorship. I was so moved by the story—the one we know and the one that rips through our hearts as “Pips” lives through his German nightmare, while so many did not—six million, as we know. We need his story today, to arm us, to inform us, to give us the courage to go on, to be brave, to be fearless.” — Judy Collins, Grammy winning singer-songwriter & author “In her searing, deeply personal memoir, Georgette Bennett provides a guided tour of history’s darkest landscape during its cruelest hour. Steeped in history, Half-Jew—Full Life offers an eyewitness account of unthinkable, unspeakable horror that is also an eloquent testament to the resilience of the human spirit.” — Richard Walter, author of Deadpan “The true story of Half-Jew—Full Life is riveting, as the reader experiences the nightmare of living through the Nazi determination to eliminate all Jews, but then, onwards through to life in New York during the second half of the 20th century, and into the 21st. Following the journey of Gerd Phillipsohn, whom we come to know as Pips, through persecution to survival to happiness, we become deeply emotionally involved in his story. That is the achievement of the brilliant storyteller, Georgette Bennett.” — Sir Trevor R. Nunn, multiple Tony Award winning artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theater “Bennett has succeeded in bringing an exceptional man to life, while humanizing the Holocaust and recent history…. Pips’s adventures are funny, harrowing, and improbable. But they’re real—and that makes his story all the more compelling. Half-Jew—Full Life takes you through the arc of an exceptional life, from birth to death, and stays with you long after the last heartrending sentence.” — F. Murray Abraham, Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Grammy winner ""Half-Jew—Full Life: The Unlikely Journey of a Voluntary Jew from Nazi Persecution to the American Dream is…a riveting plunge into the heart of the Holocaust and the hope that survived its darkest depths.… With a detectives determination and a historians understanding, Bennett crafts his story from years of Pipss own tape recordings, blending his voice, her memories, and deep historical context into a narrative as intimate as it is cinematic. She has given us a character for the ages. — Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University “This is the astounding story of someone who belonged to a group that seldom get their histories told—mischlings—in this case with an Aryan mother and Jewish father. Amidst terror and mass death ""Pips"" is always larger than life—choosing, out of love, to be Jewish rather than save himself from deportation, going underground and surviving Gestapo arrests and imprisonment…. Georgette Bennett's jaw-dropping, page-turning book reads as comedy amidst horror, invincible life force against the odds of survival, and then, in America, an epic of genius chuztpah. And like all the most brilliant biographies it makes you wish you had known Pips in person. But by the end of the book you pretty much do.” — SIR SIMON SCHAMA, historian, documentarian, and author of many groundbreaking books and TV series, such as A History of Britain, The Story of the Jews, and The Holocaust: 80 Years On “This is one of the most moving accounts of Holocaust survivors, and it deserves inclusion in high school American History curricula.” — Readers' Favorite

Author Information

Georgette Bennett is a TED speaker, an award-winning sociologist, widely published author, popular lecturer, and former broadcast journalist. In 2021, she was selected as one of Forbes’ 50 over 50 Women of Impact (“Bennett joins Condoleezza Rice, Dr. Najat Arafat Khelil, and Susan Rice as women who helped shape the course of modern American foreign policy and human rights”). Bennett served with the U.S. State Department Religion and Foreign Policy working group on conflict mitigation, tasked with developing recommendations for the U.S. Secretary of State on countering religion-based violence. She is Past Chair of the Jewish Funders Network and serves on the Board of Third Way. In addition, she is an Advisory Board member for the International Rescue Committee and the Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue at the Jewish Theological Seminary.  Bennett was a winner of a 2020 AARP Purpose Prize for her work with MFA. She is involved with dozens of organizations, having served on many boards, and she has been honored by numerous organizations, all of which gives her powerful leverage for publicizing the book.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available