Customer Reviews

Hitler's Exiles: Personal Stories of the Flight from Nazi Germany to America

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This is an excellent set of personal reminiscences from some of the Jews who escaped Nazi Germany from the early 1930s up to beginning of the 1940s. The stories are so incredibly vivid. What really struck me was the incredible difficulties they faced - the perverse Nazi bureaucracy, friends who turned their back, the loss of both material goods and the psychological loss of family and friends in Germany, and what happened when they fled Europe . This book doesn't stop at the end of the WW2 - it examines the impact of exile, and the cost of making new lives in countries when all you escaped with was your life. Any person interested in background reading on WW2, and a vivid picture of what it was really like for the Jews, would find this a worthwhile book.

Though I am still reading the book, I had to write this review as I enjoyed it very much - so much so that I did not go for my daily evening stroll. This book may be considered a compilation of stories by Jewish Germans waiting to emigrate from their( no longer) Nazi fatherland. Coming from a developing country the stories seems so modern. Germany seems to be such an advanced country but with a soul of a devil. I don't think things have improved much, I do remember having a bad time when I visited Germany in 1979 as a child ( not that the situation was good in Moscow, where I was based, or in UK). Xenophobia also exists in India and we must try to rise above such petty matters though sometimes it make life more interesting ( if you are not the victim). Well enjoy this book in your cosy bedroom and shed few crocodile tears for those long dead persons!