Event report: Half-Jew—Full Life, an unlikely biography

Who was Pips to you? That was the opening question as Prof Esra Özyürek and Dr Georgette Bennett discussed Half-Jew–Full Life, a compelling new biography of Gary “Pips” Phillips. 

Bennett read a passage relaying Pips’ first-hand experience of (what became known as) Kristallnacht, before explaining that Pips had been her third-cousin-in-law and (following the early death of her father) something of a father figure. 

As the book title emphasises, born in Nazi Germany (“from Germany, not German”, he would say in later life) Pips had mixed parentage and his embrace of his Jewish identity was a choice. He was coming-of-age as the Nuremberg Laws came into effect; opting to become Bar Mitzvah, he gained a bicycle (stolen a short time later) and lost his civil rights.

An unusual character

Bennett explained that Pips’ story as a Holocaust survivor had several unusual qualities: he lived in Berlin, and his Aryan parent made him exempt from deportations. He therefore had a central vantage point on historical events. When his girlfriend was to be deported, they went into hiding. Lacking relevant identity papers, life was a constant quest for the next meal or lodging. Captured three months later, the girlfriend was sent to Auschwitz and Pips to prison. He would escape three times, always recaptured—although he found help in unlikely places, including from a Nazi officer who loaned his summer cottage and provided false papers. On his fourth capture, he met Olga, Bennett’s third cousin and the woman who would become his wife.

Bennett first met Pips when she arrived in America. A playful—and sometimes frustratingly childish—man, he was a lot of fun to be around. And just as much of his wartime experience would seem implausible if not carefully checked and tested, so his experience in the USA includes some near-legendary episodes. 

Learning from Pips

What did you learn from him? Özyürek wondered. The answer was certainly not to “be like” him, Bennett explained, before sharing a tale worthy of Mad Men: photographer to the Hollywood stars, Pips ended up starring in a Playboy magazine photoshoot, surrounded by nude women, when the booked male model failed to show. 

Pips left Bennett the rights to his story. It had been a struggle to share some dimensions, such as long-term liaisons with two sex workers. These too, though, Bennett came to understand through conversations with Pips’ therapist, were testimony to the complexities of his early life and reflected his experience of being asked to put his body to service to comfort those facing death. 

This live event was not recorded. Scroll down to watch a previous recording of Dr Bennett in conversation with journalist and cultural critic, Sarah Seltzer (February 2026 at New York Public Library).

Half-Jew–Full Life: The Unlikely Journey of a Voluntary Jew from Nazi Persecution to the American Dream is out now in hardback (UK publication date: 26 March, RRP £25, ISBN 978-19498-46744) and also as an eBook. Purchase from your preferred outlet or direct from the publisher, Skyhorse Publishing.

Praise for Bennett’s biography

“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

“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

“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