The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught in Between by Michael Dobbs
Requirements: .MP3 reader, 316 MB
Overview: 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 1930s and ’40s. This audiobook complements the exhibition The Americans and the Holocaust that is now on view at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
In 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 multiyear quest to acquire American visas. One in four eventually managed to gain entry to the US or to other foreign countries; the remainder perished in French camps or, later, in Auschwitz.
Among these “unwanted” refugees were Jews from the village of Kippenheim, whose stories are at the heart of this audiobook. Drawing on previously unpublished letters, diaries, and visa records, Michael Dobbs provides a vivid picture of what it was like to live among increasingly hostile neighbors, waiting for “the piece of paper with a stamp” that meant the difference between life and death. And he recounts the debates over the fate of these refugees occurring simultaneously at the highest levels of the American government at a time when the public was deeply isolationist, xenophobic, and antisemitic. Here is the riveting narrative of a small community struggling to survive amid tumultuous events and reach a safe haven despite the odds stacked against them.
Genre: Audiobooks > Non-Fiction
Download Instructions:
http://ceesty.com/wMba47
http://ceesty.com/wMba5u
