The Right of Passage: One Jewish Family's Struggle to Escape the Holocaust

A gripping account of a family in flight for their lives from the growing terror in Europe, and the difficult and desperate dilemmas they faced as they looked for safe passage. How much could the victims of the Holocaust have known of what awaited them? How much should they have known? The Right of Passage reveals how different members of a single German-Jewish family tried to flee the Nazi regime. The discovery of a cache of photographs leads the authors to hundreds of letters, on which the book is based. Newly translated from German, these exchanges among leading thinkers of the period vividly record an intellectual culture in flight, though none could grasp the nature of the evil that was coming. Most members of the family found safety in England, Ireland or America, some only just in time; the logician and philosopher Kurt Grelling, exiled in Belgium, was arrested when the Nazis invaded. Deported to France and interned by the Vichy regime, despite the efforts of friends, Grelling's attempts to find passage to America ultimately came to nothing. But his letters speak across the decades, urging us to question our unconscious attitudes to the millions of victims of the worst mass atrocity in history. AUTHORS: Julian Beecroft has written 10 works of narrative non-fiction, as well as features, travel pieces and exhibition reviews for The Guardian, The Telegraph and 1843 (Economist magazine). He has lectured in the history of classical music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and is a trained translator. Sheri Blaney ran her own stock photo agency in Boston for 21 years, and currently works as a freelance IP copyright consultant. She has been an invited judge for The Boston Globe and The Griffin Museum of Photography contests. She hails from a Jewish family. 52 b/w illustrations

About the Author :
JULIAN BEECROFT has written 10 works of narrative history in the fields of art and culture, as well as features, reviews and travel pieces for the Guardian, the Telegraph and 1843 (Economist magazine). He has lectured on 20th-century music history at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and has a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing. SHERI BLANEY, who hails from a Jewish family, ran her own stock photo agency in Boston for 21 years, and currently works as a freelance IP copyright consultant. She has been an invited judge for The Boston Globe and The Griffin Museum of Photography contests.

Review :
‘Sometimes the dates and numbers of the past obscure the individual human dramas that comprise our history. Fortunately, The Right of Passage makes visceral and intimate – and all the more meaningful – the story of the Holocaust and a family's struggle to escape its unspeakable evils.’ ‘An evocative and urgent reminder of the perils of being a bystander at a time of burgeoning threats to democratic freedoms around the world. ... The Right of Passage is a work of meticulous research and rare devotion. What began with a serendipitous discovery of a cache of negatives in a rubbish bin in Massachusetts almost half a century ago became the book you hold now in your hands: one-part gripping detective story, one-part page-turning tragedy about the untold potential lost to antisemitism and the Holocaust. ... a work of great historical importance with deep resonance for our current moment.’ ‘The fate of the Grelling family kept me spellbound. Their brilliance and resilience in desperate times told through letters, photographs and personal reflections is moving and a must-read in a world that is still grappling with one of history's darkest chapters.’ ‘What begins with a box of abandoned negatives and notebooks yields a thrilling piece of detective work and the revelation of a family history shaped by flight, tragedy, and exile.’ ‘The Right of Passage is a meticulously researched book that is both intellectually fascinating and deeply moving. Although subtitled One Jewish Family’s Struggle to Escape the Holocaust, it tells a broader story about the fate of German Jewry under the Nazis and their willing accomplices in Vichy France, a fate made worse by the unwillingness of western democracies, sometimes driven by home-grown antisemitism, to accommodate refugees fleeing genocidal tyranny. … Assembled from a treasure-trove of family correspondence, interviews, private memoirs and photographs, The Right of Passage is a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in Holocaust studies.’ ‘A well-researched reconstruction of how a gifted German-Jewish logician had to flee to Belgium but finally ended up in the nazi camps. The reader can follow, in Grelling's own words, how even during difficult times friendship and love and even intellectual exchange was not destroyed by the brutality of Nazism.’ ‘Snapshots of an unbroken but acutely endangered belief in the power of reason… the painstaking and detailed research reveals an important insight: as the number of contemporary witnesses continues to dwindle, our knowledge and future generations' understanding of the Nazi reign of terror and the Holocaust depends on the rescue, careful research and publication of letters, diaries and other personal documents that document human behaviour in inhumane times, but which are largely not yet kept in archives. One such accidentally preserved collection of letters and photographs forms the basis for this extraordinary and exemplary book.’ ‘This book tells the story of one Jewish family’s experience during the Nazi era in Germany ... a detailed and engrossing examination of one extended family’s travails during that dark time. But it is impossible to read it without recognizing how enormously relevant it is to today ...’ ‘... an intimate Holocaust narrative that conjures full lives from fragments – letters, photographs, interviews and archival materials. … There is heroism in the devotion of Kurt Grelling and his circle of European intellectuals to their work and to one another, in the resilience of the Grelling family, and in many small acts of kindness at the story’s edges. There is also a grand and pitiless combination of human forces that corrupts or pulverizes all it touches. However dramatic, this is a history of individuals and small communities, memorialized as they must be if we are to remember the many millions.’