EXILE: A MEMOIR OF 1939 - Hardcover

SCHNEIDER, BRONKA

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814208088 ISBN 13: 9780814208083

Publisher: Ohio State University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Bronka Schneider and her husband, Joseph, were two of the thirty thousand Austrian Jews admitted as refugees to Great Britain between March 1938 and 2 September 1939. It was not until 1960, however, that Schneider wrote her memoir about the year she spent as a housekeeper, with Joseph as a butler, in a Scottish castle.

Schneider tells of daily encounters—with her employers, the English lady and her husband, a retired British civil servant who had spent many years in India; the village locals; other refugees; and a family of evacuees from the slums of Glasgow.

The editors have divided this memoir into chapters, adding headlines from the London Times as epigraphs. These headlines, reporting the escalating events of World War II, are in stark contrast to daily activities of the residents of this isolated region of Scotland. A commentary by Erika Bourguignon provides historical, political, and cultural background of this period.

About this title

About the Author

Erika Bourgignon, Bronka’s neice, is professor emeritus of anthropology at The Ohio State University. Barbara Hill Rigney is a professor of English at The Ohio State University and the author of five other books, including The Voices of Toni Morrison (Ohio State University Press 1994).

Edition details

• Publisher: Ohio State University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814208088
• ISBN 13: 9780814208083
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160
• Editor: BOURGUIGNON ERIKA, RIGNEY BARBARA HILL