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

This book is based on interviews with 190 Jewish refugees who escaped from Nazi Germany and Austria during the 1930s. "The basic research data werederived from Whiteman's questionnaire, which was composed of four pages of essay questions. The essays probed the refugees' experiences before and during life under Hitler, their escapes, their processes of resettlement, and the emotional traumas that they endured. " (Choice). While much information exists on the dramatic fate of concentration camp victims, little is available about the Jewish men, women, and children who managed to escape before Hitler implemented mass executions and the death camps. The Uprooted: A Hitler Legacy is an extraordinary work featuring the stories of 190 escapees, lived through their own eyes and compellingly recollected in their own words. Dorit Bader Whiteman, a clinical psychologist and a refugee herself, depicts the experiences of these escapees: the persecution by citizens and officials; the abrupt confiscation of personal possessions; the raids and arrests; the quest to save the children; the dangers and fortuities in escape and resettlement; and the lasting emotional consequences of these e By the end of the 1930s, European Jews fled to countries worldwide in search of a haven, among them England, Sweden, Turkey, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, Canada, and the United States. One of the most moving accounts is that of the Kindertransport of 10,000 Jewish children in 1939 from Nazi-occupied countries to Great Britain in trains so crowded that the smaller children had to be placed in luggage racks above the seats. Dr. Whiteman illustrates the spectrum of foster homes, ranging from the compassionate to the injurious, in which the Kinder, separated from their parents, were placed. It is equally poignant to read of the adult refugees who struggled to resettle in a new land unable to speak the language, without appropriate skills or education, without money or contacts, and filled with uncertainty over the fate of family and friends. The author provides important psychological insights into how these experiences have left the escapees to this very day with strength and with pain. The Uprooted, a landmark testament to the courage and resilience of this unstudied population, will be compelling reading for the lay person, as well as social scientists and historians, and for the survivors and

Table of Contents:
Foreword; Acknowledgments; Prologue; Pt. I Under Hitler; The Moment Our Lives Stood Still; The Tightening of the Noose; Getting Out: The Obstacles; The Sagas of Kurt and Franz; Getting In: The Neighboring Cell; Leaving: Three Vignettes; Kristallnacht: The Beginning of the End; Getting There; Three Odysseys; Die Kinder; They Traveled through the Night; And Most of All - Smiles!; Pt. II Before Hitler; The Nest; A Certain Style; Reality or Illusion?; Pt. III The Years of Resettlement; A Placement, Not a Home; So Many Reasons; Fragments of the Children's Lives; A Meeting of Minds and Hearts; The Long Way Home; Not Yet; Internment; Prison, Italian-Style; The Road Upward; The Farmer and the Taxidermist; The Energy of Youth; Pt. IV The Emotional Aftermath; Don't Cry, Grandma!; The Assimilated Outsider; I Am Glad Hitler Missed One; Epitaph: In Memoriam; "Make Believe"; The Respondents; Questionnaire; References; Index