The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World [Hardcover]

Kati Marton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 2006

Author Kati Marton follows these nine over the decades as they flee fascism and anti-Semitism, seek sanctuary in England and America, and set out to make their mark. The scientists Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner enlist Albert Einstein to get Franklin Roosevelt to initiate the development of the atomic bomb. Along with John von Neuman, who pioneers the computer, they succeed in achieving that goal before Nazi Germany, ending the Second World War, and opening a new age. Arthur Koestler writes the most important anti-Communist novel of the century, Darkness at Noon. Robert Capa is the first photographer ashore on D-Day. He virtually invents photojournalism and gives us some of the century's most enduring records of modern warfare. Andre Kertesz pioneers modern photojournalism, and Alexander Korda, who makes wartime propaganda films for Churchill, leaves a stark portrait of post war Europe with The Third Man, as his fellow filmmaker, Michael Curtiz, leaves us the immortal Casablanca, a call to arms and the most famous romantic film of all time. Marton brings passion and breadth to these dramatic lives as they help invent the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Noted journalist and bestselling author Marton (Hidden Power) offers a haunting tale of the wartime Hungarian diaspora. The nine illustrious Hungarians she profiles were all "double outsiders," for, as well as being natives of a "small, linguistically impenetrable, landlocked country," they were all Jews. Fleeing fascism and anti-Semitism for the New World, each experienced insecurity, isolation and a sense of perpetual exile. Yet all achieved world fame. The scientists Leo Szilard, Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, along with game theorist and computer pioneer, John von Neuman, spurred Albert Einstein to persuade Franklin Roosevelt to develop the atomic bomb. Robert Capa and Andre Kertesz became legendary photojournalists. Alexander Korda was the savior of the British film industry, and Michael Curtiz directed Casablanca. Arthur Koestler penned the monumental anti-Communist novel Darkness at Noon. Marton intricately charts each man's career in the context of WWII and Cold War history. Herself Hungarian-born, the daughter of journalists who escaped Soviet-occupied Hungary in 1957, Marton captures her fellow Hungarians' nostalgia for prewar Budapest, evoking its flamboyant cafes, its trams, boulevards and cosmopolitan Jewish community. Marton writes beautifully, balancing sharply defined character studies of each man with insights into their shared cultural traits and uprootedness. 16 pages of photos, map. (Nov.)
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From The New Yorker

Among the Hungarian Jews who made their way to England and America as Hitler rose to power were four scientists, two filmmakers, two photographers, and a writer. These men, products of the same few Gymnasien and cafes, delivered the Manhattan Project, game theory, and "Casablanca." Marton, who fled Hungary as a child in 1957, illuminates Budapest's vertiginous Golden Age and the darkness that followed (a darkness that some of her subjects, notably Arthur Koestler, never shook). Seeing how abruptly the world could change, the Hungarians didn't doubt that they could change it. They also stuck together; even Leo Szilard, who crusaded against the bombs that he made possible, and Edward Teller, who sold Reagan on missile defense, stayed friends. By looking at these nine lives - salvaged, and crucial - Marton provides a moving measure of how much was lost.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (October 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743261151
• ISBN-13: 978-0743261159
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #557,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kati Marton, an award-winning former NPR and ABC News correspondent, is the author of Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History, a New York Times bestseller, as well as Wallenberg, The Polk Conspiracy, A Death in Jerusalem, and a novel, An American Woman. Mother of a son and a daughter, she lives in New York with her husband, Richard Holbrooke.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK, but..., March 20, 2007

By 

Denes Marton - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World (Hardcover)

I found this book quite interesting although not very well written. I am also less than happy with some of choices made by the author - why these nine are featured when some of them (A. Korda, for example) are not in the same league of significance as others. Why were others ignored?
But that was all well until I read that E. Wigner never returned to Hungary late in his life and was never honored there officially. I met Wigner in Budapest in the late seventies on one of his several trips to Hungary and I know that he received numerous acknowledgments there. Among others, he was elected an Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. So I wonder, what else is inaccurate in the book?

36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very important, October 30, 2006

By 

Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World (Hardcover)

In this very insightful work the lives of only nine people, saved from the Holocaust, are delved into and their impact on the world shown. John Von Nueman, Edward Teller and Robert Capa are only a few of these. The idea is partly to give a slice of life of the Hungarian Jews who were able to flee, showing how they made new lives and impacted the world. But the more sad and disturbing question is, imagine the contribution the 400,000 or more Hungarian Jews could have had, had the German Nazis and their collaborators not murdered them, gassing them all as they were deported in just a few weeks in 1944, destroying in one breadth an entire world.

Seth J. Frantzman

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Budapest's loss is the world's gain..., March 11, 2007

By 

Marc Flanagan "Reading Through Lunch" (Santa Monica, Ca.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World (Hardcover)

Ms Marton is a wonderful writer and her subject matter is close to her heart as she is a transplanted Hungarian, like the subjects of her fascinating tale: "The Great Escape". Marton has focused on nine Hungarians,scientists, film makers and photographers, who fled their homeland because of the country's intolerance to their religion. To a man they went on to make their mark in their respective fields the common thread besides their birthplace, was their everlasting affection for Budapest as one of the subjects stated "Everything I am is because of my experience growing up in Budapest". A very fine read, as a result of the book, I have been looking into travelling to this fabled city .