Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, a riveting story of Jewish families seeking to escape Nazi
Germany.
In 1938, on the eve of World War II, the American journalist Dorothy
Thompson wrote that "a piece of paper with a stamp on it" was "the
difference between life and death." The Unwanted is the intimate
account of a small village on the edge of the Black Forest whose Jewish
families desperately pursued American visas to flee the Nazis. Battling
formidable bureaucratic obstacles, some make it to the United States
while others are unable to obtain the necessary documents. Some are
murdered in Auschwitz, their applications for American visas still
"pending."
Drawing on previously unpublished letters, diaries, interviews, and visa
records, Michael Dobbs provides an illuminating account of America's
response to the refugee crisis of the 1930s and 1940s. He describes the
deportation of German Jews to France in October 1940, along with their
continuing quest for American visas. And he re-creates the heated
debates among U.S. officials over whether or not to admit refugees amid
growing concerns about "fifth columnists," at a time when the American
public was deeply isolationist, xenophobic, and antisemitic.
A Holocaust story that is both German and American, The Unwanted
vividly captures the experiences of a small community struggling to
survive amid tumultuous world events.
