Most studies of exiles and emigres from Nazi Germany have concerned the lives of outstanding scientists and scholars in various fields. This book is based on in-depth interviews with 34 men and women who had to flee from Germany and came to Britain between 1933 and 1940, focusing on "ordinary" people. Special attention is given to the social, educational and cultural backgrounds of the exiles, all of which were to play a crucial role in their new lives. Attention is also given to the historical and personal circumstances of their enforced departure, including family members who voluntarily or for other reasons stayed behind, often to perish ultimately in the Holocaust.

Berthold Jacob war einer der bekanntesten deutschen Journalisten und Pazifisten der Weimarer Republik, der als Anti-Nazi und Jude schon 1932 Zuflucht in Strassburg fand. Im Marz 1935 wurde er durch die Gestapo uber die schweizerisch-deutsche Grenze entfuhrt und in Berlin verhaftet, was internationales Aufsehen erregte. Mit einer grundlichen Einfuhrung versehen, enthalt der vorliegende Band bisher unbekannte und unveroeffentlichte Briefe und andere Dokumente, die eine detaillierte Chronik der Bemuhungen der Freunde im Exil entwerfen, Jacob aus seiner Berliner Haft zu befreien. Zugleich wirft das Buch ein neues Licht auf die schwierigen, nervenaufreibenden Lebensumstande antinazistischer Exilanten in den Emigrationslandern Europas.

Based on interviews, this work is a thematic study of representative men and women who came to Britain from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia as refugees from Nazism. Of the 34 interviewees, 23 are women and six are non-Jewish. The German-speaking emigration to Britain from 1933 through 1940 is often referred to as "Hitler's Gift" because of the many distinguished scholars and scientists it yielded. This book, with its many accounts of unsung achievement, for the first time shows the true dimensions of that gift.