Overview

Fewer than half of all the German Jews, who were discriminated against, persecuted, and eventually murdered by the Nazis, were able to save themselves by fleeing abroad. Sadly, a large number, deeply rooted in German culture, were unwilling or unable to emigrate; after """"Kristallnacht"""", the pogrom of 1938, the bureaucratic and financial obstacles to emigration became nearly insurmountable. This is the story of one family's desperate attempts to emigrate from Hitler's Germany. The Fruhaufs experienced endless bureaucratic chicanery and faced enormous difficulties with the German and foreign authorities and government agencies in their efforts to take advantage of matriarch Hilda Fruhauf's us citizenship. At the mercy of the greed of various agencies and shippers, they became more and more entangled in """"a labyrinth of red tape"""". The Fruhaufs' daughter was forced into hiding in 1943, fleeing from the Nazis to Belgium, where she was given protection by the Resistance. Miraculously, she survived. The remaining members of her immediate family were unable to secure permission to emigrate, and were killed by the Nazis. This story, first published in Germany as part of S. Fischer Verlag's Lebensbilder (Portraits of Jewish Lives) series, is an account of a family fighting desperately for their lives and a testament to their courage and fortitude. Armin Schmid was born in Munich in 1926. His essays and articles have appeared in various journals and newspapers. Renate Schmid was born in Schweinfurt, Germany in 1925, and has worked in journalism and as an editor. The Schmids have collaborated on five works of non-fiction. Margot Bettauer Dembo is an editor with the American Museum of Natural History who has translated works by Robert Gernhardt, Herta M!ller, and Hans-Joachim Maaz. Wolfgang Benz is the Director of The Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism in Berlin. This book is intended for students and researchers in 20th-century German history and Holocaust studies.

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9780810111707

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It is through a book such as this, which attempts simply to retell the story of the individuals in one family, living everyday lives, that we can begin to realize the tragic enormity of the fate that awaited them and countless others like them. --Chicago Jewish Star

A unique Holocaust biography focused on the bureaucratic nightmares of a family fighting to leave Nazi Germany. Attain and Renate Schmid are German journalists who pieced together the Fruhauf family's wartime ordeal, based largely on a paper trail of tears. While most of this Jewish family perishes in the death camps, the villains here are not infamous camp commandants but the bureaucrats who consigned them to Hitler's killing field. These faceless and merciless pencil pushers include American immigration officials, Belgian relief workers, Spanish shipping clerks, Swiss consuls, and a dozen German bureaucrats of organizations ranging from Lufthansa to the Gestapo. Because Hilde Fruhauf was born in the US, the best way out of post-Kristallnacht Germany seemed to be through the family's American ties. Reams of desperate red tape, all documented here, do not help the doomed family get past the evil of bureaucratic banality that conspires to destroy them. After exploring expensive and complicated escape options involving China, Cuba, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, and various South and Central American states, the family's matriarch hangs herself in exasperation as German legislation chokes off the Fruhaufs' ability to survive. Over time, all but one family member are shipped off to labor or death camps. The lucky one, Helga, is young and pretty enough to slip into Belgium with the help of various men - but we never learn what she has to compromise to survive. Where emotion or drama is called for, all the authors can provide us with are flat lines like: Felix had to turn to the Swiss legation and beg 'most humbly' for an extension of the Cuban visa. Once again it had all been in vain. Because we don't get to know the principal subjects well enough, the appeal of this book, though not its historical significance, gets lost in the labyrinth of red tape. (Kirkus Reviews)

It is through a book such as this, which attempts simply to retell the story of the individuals in one family, living everyday lives, that we can begin to realize the tragic enormity of the fate that awaited them and countless others like them. -- Chicago Jewish Star

Author Information

ARMIN SCHMID was born in Munich in 1926. His essays and articles have appeared in various journals and newspapers. RENATE SCHMID was born in Schwienfurt, Germany, in 1925, and has worked in journalism and as an editor. The Schmids have collaborated on five works of nonfiction. MARGOT BETTAUER DEMBO is an editor with the American Museum of Natural History who has translated works by Robert Gernhardt, Herta Müller, and Hans-Joachim Maaz. WOLFGANG BENZ is the director of The Center for the Study of Antisemitism in Berlin.

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