German Jews’ assimilation was a mask only from the German view

Evidence

The “mask” is central to the German Jews in Senocak’s image of history. It is a mask as seen by the Germans, but it was the only face that the German Jews, such as the narrator’s grandfather, actually had. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 772

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The mask/face double-distinction — an imposed mask being the only actual face — is a genuinely dense insight about performative identity in subordinated groups, resisting easy summary.
• XREF: Echoes the mask-as-real-identity theme in Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks and Du Bois’s double consciousness. — connects to: Wealthy German Jews saw themselves as fully German until forced out in the 1930s