In May 1941, Gertrude van Tijn arrived in Lisbon on a mission of
mercy from German occupied Amsterdam. She came with Nazi approval
to the capital of neutral Portugal to negotiate the departure from
Hitler's Europe of thousands of German and Dutch Jews. Was this
middle aged Jewish woman, burdened with such a terrible
responsibility, merely a pawn of the Nazis, or was her journey a
genuine opportunity to save large numbers of Jews from the gas
chambers? In such impossible circumstances, what is just action,
and what is complicity?
A moving account of courage and of all-too-human failings in the
face of extraordinary moral challenges, Th"e Ambiguity of Virtue
"tells the story of Van Tijn's work on behalf of her fellow Jews as
the avenues that might save them were closed off. Between 1933 and
1940 Van Tijn helped organize Jewish emigration from Germany. After
the Germans occupied Holland, she worked for the Nazi appointed
Jewish Council in Amsterdam and enabled many Jews to escape. Some
later called her a heroine for the choices she made; others
denounced her as a collaborator.
Bernard Wasserstein's haunting narrative draws readers into the
twilight world of wartime Europe, to expose the wrenching dilemmas
that confronted Jews under Nazi occupation. Gertrude van Tijn's
experience raises crucial questions about German policy toward the
Jews, about the role of the Jewish Council, and about Dutch,
American, and British responses to the persecution and mass murder
of Jews on an unimaginable scale."
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