A Nashville exhibit highlights the contributions of Josef Ganz and others that were swept under the rug when they were blacklisted by the Reich

When the car known today as the Volkswagen Beetle debuted 80 years ago, in 1938, it was heralded as the “people’s car” — volkswagen — of Nazi Germany, the brainchild of Adolf Hitler and Dr. Ferdinand Porsche.

Yet experts say the Nazis omitted a Jewish voice from the creation story: Josef Ganz, a German-Jewish engineer and journalist.

A renowned automotive authority, Ganz developed many concepts incorporated into the Beetle. But he was threatened with assassination, forced into exile and forgotten by history, dying of a heart attack at age 59 in Australia in 1967. Meanwhile, Beetles rolled off postwar assembly lines until 2003, becoming the best-selling car ever...

...The Jewish ‘people’s car’
Born in Budapest in 1908, Ganz became what Schilperoord called a central figure of the German auto industry in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

A mechanical engineer, Ganz was also editor-in-chief of the magazine Motor-Kritik — “the most influential magazine in the German auto industry and also abroad,” Schilperoord said. “He really analyzed cars, and inventions related to cars, with a lot of technical know-how. It was not really done by anyone else...”