This is a first attempt to sketch the portrait of a generation, the young people from Germany and Austria who were forced to emigrate after the Nazis came to power. I refer to the cohort of those born, roughly speaking, between 1914 and 1928, not the Einsteins and Freuds but those still at school or university or in apprenticeship, who had no finished education and were, in the language of the statisticians, not yet gainfully employed. I do not include the even younger ones, because their recollections were limited and their roots not very deep. About eighty thousand belonged to this age group, three quarters of whom escaped in time.

It was in many ways a truly remarkable generation. Fate dispersed them all over the globe, but many of them made a mark, largely, no doubt, out of dire necessity. They had to try harder, because for most of them there was no safety net. Some of this generation have distanced themselves from their origins, in the hope that drawing a veil over them might expedite the social integration in their new homelands. But the great majority behaved differently; this is reflected in the staggering number of recollections, published and unpublished, produced by members of this generation. It is shown perhaps even more strikingly by the great number of reunions of the class of 1933 (and 1936 and 1939) that have taken place in recent years in many parts of the world.

Difficult as it is to write the biography of an individual, it is infinitely more difficult to compose a collective portrait. There is no ideal approach that does justice to all aspects involved. By necessity many names and places have to be mentioned briefly, without the opportunity to relate the full story, to enlarge on what happened to certain individuals before and after.

Voltaire once wrote that those who write history are bound to be upbraided both for what they said and for what they omitted, and this book will not be an exception. He could have added that the historian is bound to step on a variety of toes: some may take umbrage for not having been mentioned, others for having been included but not as they see themselves.

One should never forget that the young men and women (or the boys and girls) of the 1930s were in no way a homogenous group. Some left early, others came with the proverbial last train or ship, and a few thousand escaped only after war had broken out, or survived under-ground in Nazi-occupied Europe. Some went abroad alone, others with their families. They went to every known country in the world, including some unlikely ones, a few went east (or became Communist), but most went west or south. Never before in the history of the Jewish people, or indeed any other people, had there been so wide a dispersal. Some migrated first to one country and later to another, for certain destinations (Shanghai is an obvious example), by necessity, provided only temporary shelter. A few returned to Germany or Austria when the war was over, some because of ideological conviction went to East Germany, others to West Germany, because they thought that professional prospects were better, or because they had not felt at home in the country to which they had originally emigrated. Some found integration easy in their new homelands, others faced enormous difficulties.

The great geographical dispersal quite apart, there were considerable social and cultural differences between these young refugees of the prewar years. Some came from well-to-do families who had lived in Germany or Austria for many generations, and others from poverty. The majority was secular, but a significant minority practiced their religion. There were Zionists among them, for whom leaving Germany was not a trauma but redemption, the realization of an old dream, the return to a Jewish homeland and the building of a new and better society. But many others came from highly assimilated homes, and some were Jews only by interpretation of the Nuremberg laws, children of mixed marriages or of parents who had been converted. Some were deeply rooted in German culture and language and continued to write and speak German; a few even became German writers, poets, and playwrights only in exile. Many others distanced themselves out of conviction or circumstances from their German heritage, and a few even came to deny their origins (German and Jewish), considering them either disgraceful or insignificant.

Their subsequent fates were as disparate as their backgrounds. Many of them saw military service in the Allied armies in World War II, or in the Israeli defense forces, subsequently the Israeli army. A few hundred fought in the Spanish Civil War, and about an equal number in the French Foreign Legion. Some became generals or spymasters. Hundreds, perhaps a few thousand, had hair-raising adventures escaping from Germany in the middle of the war or living inside Germany as “submarines,” sometimes in Nazi uniform. They had as much excitement and danger in a day, in an hour, as normal people in normal circumstances would face in a lifetime.

For others the transition would be relatively smooth, either because they went abroad with their family, or because they had a good war and never faced real danger. They chose every conceivable profession including that of a Benedictine abbot, Hindu guru, and West African chieftain. On the whole, they did rather well, perhaps because they had to start from scratch, because there was no helping hand, no money, no connections, no safety net. For them it was a question of swimming or sinking. For some of this generation it can certainly be said that but for Hitler and the Nazis they would never have gone as far in life as they did. Some spent their later years in the limelight, others remained in the shadow. And there was, of course, always the memory of the many thousands—relatives, close friends, acquaintances, classmates—who had not survived.

I belong to this generation, and sometimes while writing this book I had the impression that I knew every single one of them, that I could picture every one of them. This, of course, was an optical illusion. But I graduated from a German school the last year (1938) Jews were permitted to do so, lived subsequently for fifteen years in what was then Palestine and later became Israel, and I have divided my time since between the United States and Europe. Thus I have had the opportunity to meet at one time or another many of those I am writing about. And others mentioned in the narrative were the friends of friends or the acquaintances of acquaintances. Over the years I have read many of the memoirs written by members of this generation, published and unpublished. In addition I have interviewed over a long time, more or less systematically, friends as well as chance acquaintances about their fate in war and peace. I found all of their accounts interesting, and sometimes the more artless ones seemed even more authentic than the more sophisticated. The problem facing me was the abundance of material rather than the lack of it. I hope I shall be forgiven for not mentioning or quoting from every single narrative. This account, like all history, had to be selective in approach. There simply were too many stories—for each I mentioned, there were five or even ten others I had to leave out.

The surviving boys and girls of the 1930s are now in their seventies and eighties, and their number is rapidly dwindling. Wherever they are, they celebrate the anniversaries of their rescue. One generation passeth away and a new one cometh, and the world goes on for the time being. Does this generation have a heritage to bequeath? Was there a common denominator or at least common features in the first place? It might be too early even to try answering these questions, and I shall attempt to do so only tentatively and in passing. But the story so far seems to me so interesting that, even if it should appear at some future date that this generation did not have a lasting impact, its story should still be told, and I hope that this book takes a step in this direction.

Being a member of this generation, my interest in its fate went beyond mere academic interest. I do know only too well, for I experienced it in my own life, what crucial role accident played in the fate of individuals. The stories of survival against nearly overwhelming odds and of great achievement among members of this generation are many, but so are the many incredibly sad and tragic stories. A feeling of “there but for the grace of God . . .” was never far away.

One August evening a few years ago I was admitted to Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem. The hospital was full and I was lucky to find a bed in a dark corner, sharing a room with five other patients. None was very ill or sleepy and, at a late hour, after the nurses had taken the temperature, blood pressure, and glucose level for a last time, they began to tell stories from their lives. One had been in the underground in Iraq in the 1940s. Another came from the neighborhood of Lublin, Poland; he had been a boy at the time of the German invasion and spent the next five years in a so-called family camp in a very distant part of the Soviet Union. There was someone of vaguely French background who had spent the war years in the French Foreign Legion, but it had been an existence not quite as romantic as in the Hollywood films of the period. I also made my contribution, and the hours passed rather quickly with these stories, something like a latter-day Arabian nights. There was also a younger Israeli Arab man, perhaps a schoolteacher, with exquisite manners, always willing to help his neighbors, who eventually said with some envy: “What interesting lives you all have had.” We tried to explain without evident success that he may not have missed that much, and that, in any case, a price had to be paid for an eventful life.

That night the idea first occurred to me that the time had come to attempt to tell the story of my generation.

(c) copyright 2001 by Brandeis University Press

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