About this item
The powerfully told story of a group of German Jews desperately seeking American visas to escape Nazi Germany, and an illuminating account of America's response to the refugee crisis of the 1930's and 40's. This book complements the exhibition The Americans and the Holocaust that is now on view at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DCIn October 1940 the Gestapo expelled 6,504 Jews from southwest Germany, creating the first official "Jewish free zone" in the Third Reich. Interned in concentration camps in Vichy France, the deportees set out on a multi-year quest to acquire American visas. One in four eventually managed to gain entry to the U.S. or to other foreign countries; the remainder perished in French camps or, later, in Auschwitz.
About the Author
I am, almost literally, a child of the Cold War. My diplomat parents whisked me off to Russia at the age of six weeks. As a child, I lived through the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and the construction of the Berlin wall. As a reporter for the Washington Post, I witnessed the birth of the Solidarity movement in Poland, the hope and tragedy of Tiananmen Square, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the war in the former Yugoslavia.When I first went to Russia in 1950, Stalin was at the height of his power. When I left, in 1993, communism had collapsed and the Red Flag no longer flew over the Kremlin. How and why this happened is the story of the "Cold War trilogy," from its origins in the aftermath of World War II (Six Months in 1945) to its peak, during the Cuban Missile Crisis (One Minute to Midnight) , to the grand finale (Down with Big Brother) .
