Flight and Concealment

Surviving the Holocaust Underground in Munich and Beyond

Susanna Schrafstetter author Allison Brown translator

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Indiana University Press

Published:6th Sep '22

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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Flight and Concealment cover

Between ten thousand and twelve thousand Jews tried to escape Nazi genocide by going into hiding. With the help of Jewish and non-Jewish relatives, friends, or people completely unknown to them, these "U-boats," as they came to be known, dared to lead a life underground. Flight and Concealment brings to light their hidden stories.

Deftly weaving together personal accounts with a broader comparative look at the experiences of Jews throughout Germany, historian Susanna Schrafstetter tells the story of the Jews in Munich and Upper Bavaria who fled deportation by going underground.

Archival sources and interviews with survivors and with the Germans who aided or exploited them reveal a complex, often intimate story of hope, greed, and sometimes betrayal. Flight and Concealment shows the options and strategies for survival of those in hiding and their helpers, and discusses the ways in which some Germans enriched themselves at the expense of the refugees.

"With this book Susanna Schrafstetter has written one of the most thoughtful, well-researched, and genuinely comparative historical studies on rescue that I know of, and one of the only ones to reflect on restitution, postwar trajectories, and the place in postwar Germany for the survivors. Not only is it one of the most nuanced historical studies to appear on rescue in Germany, it is an essential read for historians of the topic in any national context."—Mark Roseman, Distinguished Professor of History, Pat M Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies, Indiana University

"This is a rather remarkable book. It stands out from the hundreds of other books published every year on the Holocaust by focusing on a group of victims who have been somewhat neglected. There exists already some literature on hidden Jews in Berlin, but we have no study as detailed as this on another major German city like Munich. In terms of the critical analysis of all her sources and the existing literature, this study could stand as a model for undergraduate or graduate teaching. Beyond that, the searing stories of suffering, and the touching tales of assistance offered, make this a book that will appeal to a broader non-academic audience as well."—Geoffrey J. Giles, University of Florida

"This extraordinarily careful exploration of a hitherto neglected aspect of German and Jewish history during World War II and the in the decades after the war will be of great interest to both scholars and those with a general interest Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, the occupation period, and the development of the Federal Republic of German since 1949."—Gerhard L. Weinberg, William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

ISBN: 9780253064028

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 730g

384 pages