One Step Ahead: A Jewish Fugitive in Hitler's Europe - Hardcover

Feldman, Alfred Philip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809324113 ISBN 13: 9780809324118

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Through compelling personal accounts and family correspondence, One Step Ahead documents Alfred Feldman’s harrowing flight into exile as he and his family fled the pogroms that flooded across Nazi-occupied Europe. It is a memoir of horror and hope recounted by a man who survived the organized terror of Hitler’s "Final Solution" as it destroyed entire generations of European Jewish life within ten catastrophic years in the mid-twentieth century. Feldman’s memoir conveys the searing pain that has never left him, while demonstrating the triumphant humanity of a survivor.

Feldman vividly describes the impact of the escalating anti-Semitic hatred and violence in Germany during the 1930s, the impact of the notorious Nuremberg Laws in 1935, and the terrifying Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938. By age sixteen, Feldman was living with his parents and three younger sisters in Antwerp, Belgium, during the 1939 German invasions of Poland, marking the start of World War II. In the face of increasing persecution, Feldman’s extended family scattered over the globe in a desperate attempt to remain one step ahead of their Nazi pursuers.

Recalling his life on the run, Feldman describes what few survivors have chosen to write about: the Vichy raids of August 26, 1942; the French labor brigades; the Comité Dubouchage; and life in super-vised residence in France under the Italians. While in the south of France, Feldman endured food shortages and Nazi anti-Semitic measures, beginning with work camps and culminating in the deportation and ultimate death of his mother and sisters at Auschwitz.

To evade the Germans, Feldman and his father fled into the Italian Alps in September of 1943, hiding between the Allies and the Germans. Aided by local villagers, the Feldmans survived precariously for over a year and a half, along with other Jewish refugees, until that region was liberated. Only then, and only gradually, did Feldman manage to piece together the fate of his surviving family and learn at last of the death of his mother and sisters.

Now, as an adult, Alfred Feldman has retraced his escape and exile, taking his wife and children to his hometown in Germany, the mountains in Italy, and Montagnac, where a plaque commemorates his mother and sisters.

About this title

About the Author:

Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1923, Alfred Feldman is a retired chemist and computer systems consultant.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this straightforward, often riveting memoir, Feldman recounts the harrowing years of his youth and young adulthood, which he spent eluding the Nazis. Born in Hamburg and raised by modern Orthodox parents as "a good little German," Feldman was effectively shielded from anti-Semitism, even as Jewish businesses were being boycotted and books by Jewish authors were being burned. His father's business transplanted the family to Antwerp; when the Germans invaded Belgium, Feldman's life as a fugitive began. Through strength, courage and remarkable luck, Feldman and his father managed to escape the horrific fate that awaited his mother and sisters as well as millions of others. Amid the hardship of their flight, acts of kindness stand out: the banker in Nice who chartered four ships to transport Jewish refugees to liberated North Africa; the peasants who risked their lives to provide food and shelter to Feldman and his father. While Feldman's spirit and hope survived, his faith did not. Some years after returning to Antwerp, Feldman ate a grape on the holy fast day of Yom Kippur; when he wasn't struck dead, he abandoned religion. Emigrating to America years later, he left behind the prayer shawl he was to be buried in the one that accompanied him throughout his years as a fugitive. Escape is the memoir's leitmotif, and Feldman, as both survivor and refugee from the holocaust, gives that theme a quiet power. Photos and maps.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0809324113
• ISBN 13: 9780809324118
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360