Eva and Otto: Resistance, Refugees, and Love in the Time of Hitler

by Tom Pfister, Kathy Pfister, Peter Pfister

Eva and Otto is a truestory about German opposition and resistance to Hitler as revealed through theearly lives of Eva Lewinski Pfister (1910–1991) and Otto Pfister (1900–1985).It is an intimate and epic account of two Germans—Eva born Jewish, Otto bornCatholic—who worked with a little-known German political group that resistedand fought against Hitler in Germany before 1933 and then in exile in Parisbefore the German invasion of France in May 1940. After their improbableescapes from separate internment and imprisonment in Europe, Eva obtainedrefuge in America in October 1940 where she worked to rescue other endangeredpolitical refugees, including Otto, with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt. Asrevealed in recently declassified records, Eva and Otto later engaged indifferent secret assignments with the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) insupport of the Allied war effort. Despite their vastly different backgrounds,Eva and Otto gave each other hope and strength as they acted upon what theyunderstood to be an ethical duty to help others threatened by fascism. The bookprovides a sobering insight into the personal risks and costs of a commitmentto that duty. Their unusually beautiful writing—directed to each other indiaries and correspondence during two long periods of wartime separation—alsoreveals an unlikely and inspiring love story.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Ebooks

639 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 1, 2019

Reviews

[Meg Clayton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, written by grown children about their parents, is an incredible real-life tale of heroism and escape so compellingly told it reads like a novel. It made me cry, in a good way. I am recommending it at all my own events whenever I'm asked what I'm reading, even though it is already read.

[Richard Gabriele · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a most remarkable book, impressive on many levels! A history of life-and-death political activism. An intense love story. A work of painstaking and detailed scholarship. A moving tribute by the authors to their parents. It affected me tremendously and I recommend it without reservation. Lots of people should read it.

At its core, this book recounts the story of two young refugees from Hitler’s Germany ---Otto Pfister and Eva Lewinski -----who engaged in resistance efforts against the Nazis from Paris before and during World War II, who were captured and imprisoned in camps, escaped, waited tensely in southern France for precious US visas, ultimately made their way to America and then continued their anti-Nazi fight as operatives of the US government. But it’s also a beautiful love story. After falling in love in Paris and then being pulled apart when the Germans invaded France, they wrote soul-baring letters to each other during their separation, eloquently giving voice to their most intimate hopes, emotions and fears. Otto and Eva wrote some of the most beautiful love letters I have ever come across. Eva especially is a powerful and exquisite writer who, on page after page, writing in three languages, somehow manages to express the almost inexpressible.

We live in scary times, but there have been scarier ones. Eva and Otto tells the story of two people who lived in one such earlier time, and how they managed to come through it ethically, bravely and, in the end, successfully and hopefully. While there are many touching passages in this book, the one I found most inspiring was this one from a letter Eva wrote to Otto near the end of the war:

“You have decided, and so have I, to go the hard way, to do what we think was our duty.
And even though we realize only too well that our individual action does not change the
course of things one way or the other...we did individually all that we could. And we did
it as one which makes us very, very rich…I think we can say, without being pretentious,
that we do not have to be ashamed of ourselves.”

To have lived and acted so as to be able to write those words was a noble thing. I have never written an online review for a book but I felt almost compelled to write this one. Reading about these two people uplifted my soul and gave me hope.

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It was written by the American children of two young German refugees (now deceased) who fought the Nazi's in the 1930's and 1940's. It tells the story of what they did to combat Hitler, of their imprisonment and escape from wartime camps, and of their efforts to get Jews and endangered political activists out of Europe during those perilous times.

These lovers eventually married but never told their children the full story of their heroics. It apparently wasn't until later in the authors' lives, when letters were found, memoirs disclosed and new documents unearthed, that this amazing book could be written. Wartime drama, true spy thriller, love story, history - it's all there. It's a wonderful book.

[Ken Oder · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you had met Eva and Otto Pfister in the 1950’s when they lived in a three bedroom, one bath ranch style home in Canoga Park, California, you would probably have thought they were nice ordinary people, earnestly eking out a meager living on his earnings as a craftsman while she took care of their daughter and twin sons. You’d likely have sized them up as dedicated parents and solid middle class citizens, admirable, but unremarkable. The calm, pleasant, unassuming faces, which stare at you from the book cover, would probably have confirmed your impression, and your view of them would have been correct as far as it went. The part of them you would have missed, the part you couldn’t have seen, was the steel inside them. They weren’t boastful, so they wouldn’t have told you about the long perilous road they traveled to come to the house in Canoga Park. This book tells you, and when you’ve read it, you know these “ordinary” people were two of the most courageous heroes of the greatest generation.

Both born in Germany, Eva was Jewish; Otto was Catholic. Eva joined the resistance efforts in Germany as a young girl, fled to Paris when the Nazi’s rose to power, and became a leader of German immigrants in France who worked tirelessly to overthrow Hitler. Otto, ten years older, worked as an apprentice cabinet-maker through World War I, moved to Italy to escape Germany’s poor economy and to pursue his wood-working trade, left Rome in 1926 with the rise of fascism and Mussolini, and settled in France.

Eva and Otto met in Paris in 1935. They fell in love, but they put their lives on hold to work unselfishly and relentlessly for more than a decade to defeat Hitler. What they went through, together and separately, is exciting and inspiring beyond words. As a short inadequate summary, suffice it to say their activities placed both of them at the top of Nazi hit lists; both were imprisoned in separate camps; both escaped; Eva found refuge in the U.S.; she worked tirelessly to rescue other endangered members of the resistance, including Otto, eventually meeting with and securing the assistance of Eleanor Roosevelt; and after they were reunited in the U.S., they agreed to defer their personal goals again to work on secret assignments from the U.S. Office of Strategic Services to defeat Hitler, Eva from New York and Otto deploying to the European war front. Only after Hitler fell, did they finally feel free to pursue their dream of a peaceful life together raising a family.

So this is the astounding true story of these two brave, self-sacrificing, resilient heroes, largely told in their own voices through contemporaneous writings, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a captivating love story. It’s primarily the story of Eva's and Otto’s deep enduring love for one another, but it’s also a labor of love by their children, who spent years preserving their parents’ memoirs, letters, and diaries, visiting the European sites of the resistance efforts, retracing their parents’ arduous route over the Pyrenees to escape the Nazis, and supplementing their writings with thorough meticulous research that filled in gaps and resolved questions left unanswered. They brought Eva and Otto to life, a great gift to all of us who didn’t know them.

This story has stirred feelings that will stay with me forever. It’s a treasure and is by far the most rewarding book I’ve read this year.

[Mikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! Where to start?! This is clearly a labour of love which must have taken a lot of time to sort out and compile so that it followed a logical path as it described the ups and downs of Eva and Otto's lives. To write more about the book would mean divulging too many spoilers, so I won't. Suffice to say that their lives and those of the people around them were difficult yet satisfying in spite of the dangers they faced and the frequent new beginnings they endured through necessity and pragmatism.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book includes many beautifully written diary entries from Eva. How is that possible that those diaries still exist? It turns out that Eva —and her immediate family— were “lucky ones”: they escaped from Germany in 1933, barely making it out, but making it out alive nonetheless. To lose everything but their lives made them lucky, because those who could not find a way to escape were killed in the millions. The refugee experience was as difficult then as it is now, and Eva’s family were engaged in anti-Nazi work on top of that. This book tells their fascinating and gripping story of secret dangerous work and close-call escapes, and also the romantic story of two people falling deeper in love during horrendous times. Every WWII story of survival is remarkable and unique, and this is no exception.