The Uprooted: A Hitler Legacy: Voices of Those Who Escaped Before the 'Final Solution'

by Dorit Bader Whiteman

Whiteman, who escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria with her family, is now a clinical psychologist in New York. Her impassioned, riveting study of the Jews who managed to leave Germany and Austria before Hitler implemented mass executions and death camps is based partly on interviews with 190 escapees. She tells the incredible story of the Kindertransport operation, which took 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied countries to England by train and ferry. Adolf Eichmann, then an emigration official, disdainfully approved this mass exodus. We learn of the formidable barriers escapees faced in getting out, of horrid or supportive foster homes, of the trauma and pain of being forcibly uprooted. Many escapees endured years of poverty before re-establihsing themselves. Whiteman rejects Hannah Arendt's thesis that German Jews' cultural assimilation led to their political blindness in a "fool's paradise." This is a distinctive contribution to Holocaust literature.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Holocaust

464 pages, Paperback

First published March 21, 1993

Reviews

[Meaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating study of so-called "Holocaust escapees," Jewish people who were able to get out of Nazi Europe and waited out the war in faraway nations. Much has been written about Holocaust survivors, but very little on those that made it out just in time. The author is herself an escapee and records her own experiences in the book as well as others'.

There is a large section on the Kindertransport, of course, but this isn't the only segment of escapees covered. The author interviewed people who escaped to just about every region in the world, including North and South America, China, Australia and South Africa. The book was published in 1993 and it was probably the last chance to get firsthand the stories of people who were adults when they escaped -- by then these people were in their eighties and nineties. The books covers many aspects of the escapees' experiences, from their lives before the war, to the difficulties they had getting out of the country and finding some other place to go, to how their escape affected their attitudes in the decades following the war.

This is a very valuable book, not only because there is so little on the subject but because it's an excellent study and well-written. Of course the escapees were much more fortunate than those who weren't able to emigrate, and well they know, but that doesn't mean they had it easy. The stories of what they went through are yet another example of just how strong and resilient humans can be when necessary.

[Jeanne Moran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heart-warming, heart-wrenching, and absolutely fascinating.
This book profiles the true experiences of 190 individuals who legally 'escaped' the Nazis in Germany and occupied lands before the outbreak of WWII. It highlights personal stories of difficulties overcome and sacrifices made by parents desperate to usher their children to safety. It speaks to the fortitude and recovery of those same children, ripped from their families and their culture, often never again to be reunited with either.