Nuremberg Laws

The Nuremberg Laws are the novel’s clearest benchmark for the legal exclusion of Jews from a nation. Passed in Germany in 1935 under Adolf Hitler, they deprived Jews of civil rights and sought to exclude them from membership in the national community. Their importance in the story lies both in that stated historical function and in the political argument they are made to serve: Lionel Bengelsdorf invokes them to defend Lindbergh’s government, while the surrounding narrative questions whether American policies can be coercive even when they are presented as invitations to belong.

Definition and Function

In Bengelsdorf’s account, the Nuremberg Laws represent an explicit, legal form of antisemitic exclusion: Jews lose civil rights and are denied full membership in their nation. He presents them as the opposite of the Office of American Absorption, which he describes as inviting Jews further into American national life. The contrast turns on a distinction between exclusion by law and incorporation through government programs.

The comparison is pointed because Bengelsdorf does not deny that Lindbergh had previously made public statements rooted in antisemitic clichés. Instead, he argues that Lindbergh has relinquished his misconceptions and that the American government has shown no equivalent of Nazi legislation or official fascist persecution. The Nuremberg Laws thus become the measure against which Bengelsdorf asks his listeners to judge the administration: if America has not reproduced that particular legal instrument, he suggests, it should not be called fascist.

Bengelsdorf’s Defense and Herman Roth’s Rejection

Bengelsdorf makes this case at the Roth family’s dinner table after saying that he recently spoke with Lindbergh at the White House. He invokes the president’s election by a landslide and his supposed lack of authoritarian conduct, then contrasts the Nuremberg Laws with the Office of American Absorption’s programs. His reasoning is not simply that the laws are unjust; it is that their unmistakable severity makes them a dividing line between Nazi Germany and Lindbergh’s America.

Herman Roth does not accept the reassurance. After Bengelsdorf asks whether his explanation addresses Herman’s fears, Herman answers, “No. No. Not for a moment.” He says that hearing someone speak in Bengelsdorf’s manner alarms him more. The disagreement exposes a limit in Bengelsdorf’s comparison: demonstrating that American policy is not identical to the Nuremberg Laws does not, for Herman, establish that the policy is harmless.

American Policies in the Shadow of the Laws

The narrative sets Bengelsdorf’s claim of incorporation beside programs that single out Jewish communities for official attention. Just Folks sends Jewish boys from city neighborhoods to work on farms hundreds of miles from home, while the Office of American Absorption presents the scheme as a voluntary introduction to heartland life. Aunt Evelyn supports Sandy Roth’s participation, and Sandy later becomes a recruiter for the program. These details give the government’s language of opportunity a personal and family dimension, while showing that the program is organized around Jewish identity.

Homestead 42 extends that administrative reach to households and employment. In a letter dated May 22, 1942, a company tells Herman Roth that it is offering relocation opportunities in compliance with a request from Homestead 42 and the Office of American Absorption. The letter presents relocation as a chance to strengthen the country and enrich families’ Americanness. The novel also describes assignments represented by pins on state and national maps, with decisions depending on cooperation among government offices, corporations, and receiving states. The polite language of opportunity sits alongside a system in which families are selected and their destinations assigned.

The Good Neighbor Project brings the same tension into the Roths’ own neighborhood. Italian families move into flats vacated by Jewish households, with rent discounts paid through the Department of the Interior. The plan is described as enriching Americanness, but its perceived purpose is to weaken Jewish communal solidarity and electoral influence. These policies are not identified as the Nuremberg Laws, and the novel does not equate their legal form with the deprivation of civil rights described by Bengelsdorf. Instead, their proximity to his defense complicates the idea that the absence of those laws alone proves that Jewish belonging is secure.

Narrative Significance

The laws give the characters a stark vocabulary for arguing over what persecution looks like. Bengelsdorf uses them to insist on a categorical difference between Nazi exclusion and Lindbergh-era programs framed as Americanization. Herman’s refusal to be reassured, followed by the narrative’s account of relocation, demographic intervention, and administrative selection, keeps the question open at the level of lived experience: a government may speak of incorporation while placing pressure on the people it claims to welcome.

That tension matters because the novel also depicts Jewish characters claiming an American inheritance. During the family’s visit to Washington, Philip Roth feels a surge of national belonging before the image of Martha Washington; Herman declares his belief in and love for the country to his new neighbor, Mr. Cucuzza. Such attachments do not erase vulnerability, just as the Nuremberg Laws’ absence does not by itself resolve it. In the novel, the laws remain both a specific historical measure of exclusion and a contested standard for judging the difference between formal citizenship and secure belonging.