Awards

• Commended for Independent Publisher Book Awards (Autobiography/Memoir) 2005

Overview

In early 1939, after Kristallnacht, young Inge Joseph's family in Germany is broken apart, and her desperate mother sends her alone to Brussels to live with wealthy relatives. But she soon finds herself one of a hundred Jewish children fleeing for their lives following Hitler's invasions of Belgium and France. For a time, in 1941 and 1942, it seems as if Inge and the others have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, as they find shelter through the Swiss Red Cross in an idyllic fifteenth-century French chateau. Inge even finds love there. But the rumors and horrors of the Holocaust are never far away, and eventually French gendarmes surprise the children, taking them from their protectors to a nearby transit camp. In their desperate attempts to escape, Inge and her boyfriend face unexpected life-and-death decisions - wrenching decisions that will haunt Inge for the rest of her life. This powerful, never-before-told memoir is based on Inge's own sixty-six-page manuscript, found after her death; David Gumpert has also drawn from Inge's personal letters, from the recollections of friends, relatives, and people who were with her in Europe, and from his own close relationship with his aunt. One of the most dramatic stories of Christian rescue of Jewish children during the Holocaust, ""Inge"" is at the same time a totally frank account of the life and feelings of a teenage girl struggling to survive the Holocaust on her own - and of how the effects of that experience reverberated through her life and on into the lives of her descendants. No matter how or why one reads it, ""Inge"" is a story of survival not soon to be forgotten.

Full Product Details

9780802826862

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Reviews

Poignant and powerful, this memoir is the joint effort of the survivor, Inge Joseph Bleier, and her able nephew, David E. Gumpert, who successfully captures the voice and tone of his aunt and weaves her narrative into a moving work. One senses the anticipation of danger, the anguish of the unknown, and the precariousness of life on the run along with the excitement of a girl growing into a woman, of the discovery of first love, and of one's ability to confront a powerful enemy. This is no romanticization of the past or of the mixed blessing of survival but an honest recollection of things past. I recommend this book highly. Michael Berenbaum

Author Information

Inge Joseph Bleier survived World War II and emigrated to the United States, where she married, raised a family, and worked as a registered nurse who headed the obstetrics and gynecology department at Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago. She died in 1983.

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