Escape to Virginia: From Nazi Germany to Thalhimer’s Farm

by Robert H. Gillette

Jewish teenagers Eva and Töpper desperately searched for an escape from the stranglehold of 1930s Nazi Germany. They studied agriculture at the Gross Breesen Institute and hoped to secure visas to gain freedom from the tyranny around them. Richmond department store owner William B. Thalhimer created a safe haven on a rural Virginia farm where Eva and Töpper would find refuge. Discover the remarkable true story of two young German Jews who endured the emotional torture of their adolescence, journeyed to freedom and ultimately confronted the evil that could not destroy their spirit. Author Robert H. Gillette retells this harrowing narrative that is sure to inspire generations to come.

Genres: Holocaust, Nonfiction, World War II, War, Memoir, History

259 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 10, 2011

Reviews

[Fran · Rating 5 out of 5]

1930's Germany; a dangerous place to be. Eva and Topper are two German Jewish teenagers watching their freedoms being taken away. They can no longer attend school.

Eva and Topper both apply for entry to Gross Breesen, an agricultural training school near Breslau, Germany. The purpose of the 2 year farming program is to turn successful applicants into farmers. A farm called Thalhimer's Farm in central Virginia will house these German Jewish refugees once their immigration visas are approved. The Gross Breesen experience of farming will provide hope, courage, camaraderie as well as every grueling aspect of farm life.

Mr. Gillette refers to his writing as creative history. His tome definitely reads like enhanced fiction though realism is created through photographs and diary entries. We are given insight into Eva's and Topper's innermost feelings. We feel their losses and triumphs.

I highly recommend this book perhaps as a companion book to "The Diary of Anne Frank". Mr. Gillette thoroughly researched and presented his tome masterfully.


Digital copy provided by Net Galley.

[Lori Shafer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had just finished reading a couple of books of children from the Holocaust. When I saw this book, it caught my interest. The strongest point of this book is the story before the story. Gillette wrote about the lives of two teens who lives were forever changed by the Nazis. Their stories start long before many of the Jewish inhabitants of Germany were getting worried. I read the story of a dutiful daughter who was well liked and well known in her hometown, but whose life changed dramatically. I could feel her confusion about why suddenly her friends were not friendly. Why did her perfectly planned life become a life she no longer recognized? It was so sad to read how people changed towards their neighbors because of the Nazis. Even in England, the children she met were far from welcoming.

The young man in the book just wanted to make a difference, much like the girl. He saw his choices in life getting smaller and smaller. He should have been a star. Intelligent, good athlete, and blond good looks. But he was Jewish and that made all the difference.

Both young adults choose to take part in a special education opportunity in Germany. A farm where Jewish young people were taught life skills to make a difference. A place where they could have hope and possible help their fellow Jewish citizens. Both worked hard and wanted the chance to be something in a time when being Jewish could end your life.

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Escape to Virginia: From Nazi Germany to Thalhimer’s Farm is by Robert H. Gillette. This book deals with a farm set up by Dr. Bondy to teach young Jewish Germans an occupation so they would have an occupation that would enable them to emigrate to another country. Gross Breesen was an ideal set up; but the work had to be chosen with care to fit the environment and the needs of the people settling here. Dr. Bondy chose his students with care to ensure the best possible candidates for his experiment. He intended not only to have them care for Gross Breesen but for Gross Breesen to become part of them. At the same time he was setting up the farm, he began the long process of finding places for them to emigrate to and farms to begin to change to his format. Getting visas for German Jews to travel to another country was difficult even before World War II broke out.
The book is quite interesting as it talks about Bondy and his experiment in teaching young German Jews to farm just to get them to emigrate. He did this with the consent of the Germans and later the Nazis. He continued having them go to school at the same time he taught them husbandry. The author takes two of the individuals, Eva and Topper, and tells their complete stories. Their stories are both interesting and shows what could possibly have been the future of many of the babies who were killed during the war.
The book catches your attention and is easy to read; but the content takes longer to contemplate, so it takes longer to read the book.

[Margaret Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating look at a different aspect of the Holocaust. Following Gross Breeser Institute, a working farm, headed by Dr. Bondy, set up to rescue teens as Germany was starting to implement laws against Jews. Tracing two students in particular, Eva and Topper, as they lose the right to study in school and gain admission to Gross Breeser. I was particularly interested in the spirit that Bondy worked so hard to establish in his students. The Gross Breeser spirit. It helped keep these students alive as he worked tirelessly first in Germany and then as his students were dispersed throughout the world.

The beginning of the book is much better written than the end and does a good job of capturing the growing fear and anxiety as Europe was falling apart. Who knew what and when is important and not always so clear. The behind the scenes machinations of Bondy, Topper and department store magnet William B. Thalhimer were able to preserve some in this "safe haven" in rural Virginia. The fact that so many others were lost--murdered remains a shanda, a shame.

The back portion of the book, after the farm was closed in Virginia for financial reasons, is less well written and felt cobbled together.

Reading it, while driving through the South in the summer of 2019 with discussions of separation of children at the border and migrant detention centers (dare I say "concentration camps" felt a little too current and scary.

[Margaret Elder · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very interesting to me, primarily because I live close to Burkeville, VA, the location of Thalhimers' farm where many of the Jewish youth found refuge, work, and training. I had only scant information about it prior to this book.

At times I found the writing style to be annoying as the author moved from one character to another in what I thought was sometimes a stilted way. The book focuses on two young Germans who became refugees to America, kept diaries, and went on to become well-known professionals.

I very much appreciated the qualities of this book itself: its lovely paper, photographs, etc. Also, I was very interested in Dr. Bondy's professorship at RPI in Richmond as that school (now VCU) is my alma mater. I would have liked to have had information on Eva's [one of the two major characters] parents, who had fled to Cuba, as well as some other unanswered questions. I'm glad I read this book, but for other readers, it may have a much more narrow appeal than some other works related to this era that I have read.

[blmagm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I lived in Richmond, Virginia for 55 years and shopped at Thalhimer’s Department Store, at both the downtown and the Westmoreland Ave. locations, but I had never heard of this chapter in history. Fascinating story about how Dr. Bondy of Germany, who later became a professor at RPI, established an agricultural school for German Jewish teenagers at Gross Breesen. William B. Thalhimer found a home for these refugees in Burkeville, Virginia at Hyde Farmlands. Though the farm itself was relatively short-lived, it served its purpose in providing these adolescents a safe haven. Many then joined the American military to fight Naziism and to become US citizens. The “Gross Breesen ” spirit of resilience, diligence, and hope lives on through them and their descendants.

[Bill Glose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert H. Gillette tells the true story of Jewish immigrants rescued from German oppression in the 1930s by William B. Thalhimer, the Virginia merchant who created jobs for them on his country farm. Primarily we follow the lives of two intelligent, Jewish teens who plummet from a status as admired students and upstanding citizens to that of inferior outcasts. Escaping Germany before the Nazi hold becomes iron-clad, they find new life and hope in America. Chock full of black-and-white photos from the Thalhimer’s Farm, Escape to Virginia is an engrossing book that will make you feel as if you just stepped back in time.

[Norma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using journals, photographs and diary entries, the author tells the ‘story’ of two German Jewish teenagers during pre- to post-war Germany. Gross Breesen was initiated as a working farm in Germany to train Jewish teenagers to be productive farmers preparing them to leave Germany. William Thalhimer (Richmond department store fame) was instrumental in procuring emigration for many German Jewish teens purchasing a farm in Burkesville, Va as a working safe haven. This book was a fast read and was very interesting. It gave insight to familiar names and places within Va.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gillette tells the story of two German Jewish teens who escaped Nazi persecution in part thanks to Gross Breesen, an agricultural project begun early in Hitler's rise to power, which was designed to train future farmers. Werner Töpper Angress and Eva Jacobsohn both had to leave the program early, since their families were fleeing Germany, but both found their way to the farm, in Virginia. The farm was purchased and set up by department-store owner Robert Thalhimer as a haven for the Gross Breesen refugees.

[Crystal Toller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thalhimers Rescue

This books details the lives of German Jewish students who were rescued by William Thalhimer before the war tightened immigration to the United States. This was a fascinating book and I learned a lot that I was never aware of before. I highly recommend this book.

[Thomas Andrikus · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tale of resilience of the Jewish refugees from Gross Breesen, Germany in the face of terror and evil of Nazism. A really inspiring story!

[Debra Riggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book about children sent to America from Nazi Germany. It was interesting.

[SundayAtDusk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Robert Gillette has told this story before in The Virginia Plan: William B. Thalhimer and a Rescue from Nazi Germany, but it’s hard to determine if the story is being told in the same way in this new book. The description of the other book does not mention the two Jewish teenagers this book focuses on-–Eva Jacobsohn and Werner “Topper” Angress. It only mentions store magnate William B. Thalhimer, who purchased a farm in Virginia where German Jewish children, like Eva and Topper, could come to work and escape Nazism. William Thalhimer saved many, many lives doing what he did, by not only getting the farm, but by tirelessly trying to acquire visas for German Jews that the State Department did not want to issue. This is only part of the story, however, and only a small part of this new book. The story starts in Germany at another farm where Jewish teenagers could go. That farm was called Gross Breesen.

Gross Breesen was started in 1936 to train Jewish teenagers to be farmers, in hope that they could later emigrate as a group to another country, where they would have a hopeful future. With Hitler in power and anti-Semitism spreading like the plague, there was little doubt Jewish children had no future in Germany. Both Eva and Topper were kicked out of their public schools, like all Jews, and their parents looked for other places for them to go. Topper went directly to Gross Breesen, after passing a tough interview, whereas Eva first went to a boarding school in England. She hated it there, and was more than happy later to go live, study and work at Gross Breesen.

The headmaster of Gross Breesen was Curt Bondy, “a social and educational psychologist and a brilliant teacher”, who taught at the University of Gottingen, before he lost his job because he was Jewish. Obviously, Dr. Bondy wasn’t the one teaching the farming. He was instead teaching the students about courage, hope, self-confidence, attentiveness and self-understanding. He pleaded: “Live with integrity. Understand your own motives for your actions. Be truthful. Cooperate, commit, think!” Curt Bondy felt if the teenagers became “secure and confident within”, they could “withstand just about anything”. In addition, he believed the arts “humanized humankind”, and, thus, besides farming and academic subjects, the teenagers were exposed to music and literature, and listened to guest speakers like Martin Buber.

All good things come to an end, though, especially if you are a Jew in Nazi Germany. Both Topper’s and Eva’s parents took them out of Gross Breesen to get them out of the country. Eva ended up in the United States by way of Cuba. Topper went to Holland and later made it to Virginia thanks to William Thalhimer. Mr. Thalhimer also got Curt Bondy and the older boys at Gross Breesen out of the Buchenwald concentration camp, where they were taken during the Krystallnacht. Eva, too, went to work at the Thalhimer farm, but the farm unfortunately proved too costly, with too many workers, to go on. (And the book does not ignore how blacks were treated in that rural area of Virginia at the time, either.) There were jobs to be found, though, namely in the Army. Topper joined the United States Army and Eva became an Army nurse. Life went on after the war ended, too. Life. Eva and Topper were German Jews who made it out of Nazi Germany alive to thrive in America. This book is their story and the story of others who lived and others who died. It’s an unforgettable story and an outstanding book.

P.S. There is a short documentary about Gross Breesen called Stones from the Soil. It’s an hour long and was made in 2005 by one of the sons of one of the teenagers at the farm school in the 1930s. Both Eva Jacobsohn Loew and Werner "Topper/Tom" Angress are interviewed in the film. Amazon Instant Video currently has it.

(Note: I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)

[Michelle Kidwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Escape to Virginia From Nazi Germany to Thalhimer’s Farm by Robert H. Gillette

The History Press

History

Pub Date Feb 15, 2016

I was given a arc copy of Escape to Virginia From Nazi Germany to Thalmeirs Farm by Robert H Gillette in exchange for my honest review which is as follows:

Escape to Virginia From Nazi Germany to Thalmeirs Farm is categorized as Creative History, and is filled with interesting facts as well as black and white photograps.

This book talks about how Jewish Mother’s and Father’s would whisper about what was happening in muffled tones but more often than not Children knew something was going on.

Several Jewish Teenagers were sent to England to have a chance, separating them from their families and all they knew. Later they would be sent to Gross Bressen where they would learn to farm and take classes. A man named Bondy ran Gross Bressen wanting to give a place for these Jewish Teens a place to learn and grow.

Twenty Five Teenage girls and boys were selected to head to Thalmeirs Farm in 1938, but those who did not make it to Virginia would be captured and taken to Buckenwald Concentration Camp where they would be prisoners.

After a month of Thalmeirs trying to get the students and Bondy released from Buckenwald he succeeds in getting most of the students released, leaving only a few and Bondy at the camp.

Over a years time Thalmeir and his head lawyer worked tirelessly to get each of the students and the staff of Gross Bressen to come to the United States.

I had never heard of Thalmeir or the Hyde farm before reading Escape to Virginia From Nazi Germany but see now that he is one of the Holocaust’s Unsung hero’s. He was American willing to fight to get these people free and offer them a safe place.

I give this book five out of five stars.

Happy Reading

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even before Gillette’s book begins, it defines creative history as “history told in a way that reads like fiction,” and pays homage to the “enormous primary research required” including the “diaries, photographs, books, letters, and interviews [that] compose the primary materials from which lives were reconstructed into a living testimony.” So, with only one page, written by the daughter of each of the protagonists, Eva Jacobsohn and Werner “Töpper” Angress, and the brief paragraph on creative history, the bond is established. Readers want to follow their stories while learning about Nazi Germany, the resilience of the human spirit, and the hope provided by people from within Germany to the United States. And Jacobsohn and Angress’ only connection was Gross Breesen Institute in Germany where teenagers were taken to study agriculture and then the Hyde Farmlands in Virginia after securing visas to escape the growing atrocities against German Jews. They were not related nor were they romantic, instead, both learned to farm, tend, and be tenacious through hard work, giving up their families to become a new family focused on survival.

The incorporation of primary documents build a fertile and engaging view of the varied pathways that Jews survived, supplemented by the people who disregarded Nazi propaganda and selflessly worked for safety. Gillette’s focus on the positivity of these two individuals is empowering while educating a new generation about this devastating time period.

[Margaret Solomon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A different view of the lives of German Jews

This book provides a view that is different from the other Holocaust books I have read. It is a story of German Jewish youths who were nurtured and given a new life outside of Germany during the war. It is not a well written novel but more of a diary of different people gathered together and given a chance of a life safe from Nazis.