The Uprooted: A Hitler Legacy - Hardcover

Whiteman, Dorit Bader

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0306444674 ISBN 13: 9780306444678

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 1993

Synopsis

While much information exists on the dramatic fate of concentration camp victims, little is available about the Jewish men, women, and children who managed to escape before Hitler implemented mass executions and the death camps. The Uprooted: A Hitler Legacy is an extraordinary work featuring the stories of 190 escapees, lived through their own eyes and compellingly recollected in their own words. Dorit Bader Whiteman, a clinical psychologist and a refugee herself, depicts the experiences of these escapees: the persecution by citizens and officials; the abrupt confiscation of personal possessions; the raids and arrests; the quest to save the children; the dangers and fortuities in escape and resettlement; and the lasting emotional consequences of these experiences. By the end of the 1930s, European Jews fled to countries worldwide in search of a haven, among them England, Sweden, Turkey, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, Canada, and the United States. One of the most moving accounts is that of the Kindertransport of 10,000 Jewish children in 1939 from Nazi-occupied countries to Great Britain in trains so crowded that the smaller children had to be placed in luggage racks above the seats. Dr. Whiteman illustrates the spectrum of foster homes, ranging from the compassionate to the injurious, in which the Kinder, separated from their parents, were placed. It is equally poignant to read of the adult refugees who struggled to resettle in a new land unable to speak the language, without appropriate skills or education, without money or contacts, and filled with uncertainty over the fate of family and friends. The author provides important psychological insights into how these experiences have left the escapees to this very day with strength and with pain. The Uprooted, a landmark testament to the courage and resilience of this unstudied population, will be compelling reading for the lay person, as well as social scientists and historians, and for the survivors and

About this title

Reviews

Whiteman, who escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria with her family, is now a clinical psychologist in New York. Her impassioned, riveting study of the Jews who managed to leave Germany and Austria before Hitler implemented mass executions and death camps is based partly on interviews with 190 escapees. She tells the incredible story of the Kindertransport operation, which took 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied countries to England by train and ferry. Adolf Eichmann, then an emigration official, disdainfully approved this mass exodus. We learn of the formidable barriers escapees faced in getting out, of horrid or supportive foster homes, of the trauma and pain of being forcibly uprooted. Many escapees endured years of poverty before re-establihsing themselves. Whiteman rejects Hannah Arendt's thesis that German Jews' cultural assimilation led to their political blindness in a "fool's paradise." This is a distinctive contribution to Holocaust literature. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Clinical psychologist Whiteman has interviewed 190 people who, like herself, escaped from Nazi Germany and Austria during the 1930s. These "escapees," as they call themselves, recall their painful experiences under Nazi rule and how they often just barely made it to safety. The common thread in these discussions with the escapees is the overwhelming responsibility they feel toward those who perished in the Holocaust. Indeed, many of them took up professions like social work and teaching in which they could help other people. The escapees feel intense gratitude toward their adopted countries and see dangers to democracy in racist and illiberal attitudes. Whiteman has presented a scholarly study that libraries with strong history and psychology collections should consider.
- Paul Kaplan, Dakota Cty. Lib., Eagan, Minn.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0306444674
• ISBN 13: 9780306444678
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 446