Exile and Destruction

When Hitler marched into Austria in March 1938, the country's Jewish population numbered nearly 200,000. Those Jews who were able to find refuge in neutral countries were safe; those who fled to countries subsequently overrun by the Nazis were eventually hunted down. Between 1938 and 1945, more than 50,000 Austrian Jews were deported; no more than 2,000 returned. The estimate of Jews caught by the Nazis in neighboring countries is 17,000. Therefore, more than one-third of Austria's Jewish population were killed during this period.
After extensive research of the records at the various documentation centers and using primary as well as secondary sources, Schneider relates how Jews lived in Austria until either flight or deportation; she follows the transports to their destination and, using the fate of family and friends as examples, describes the experiences in the camps, as well as the homecoming of the survivors. In the process, Schneider provides the most detailed account available on the fate of exiles and victims from Austria. She concludes with a complete list of all camp survivors. A gripping historical record for all students of the Holocaust and modern European history.

Gertrude Schneider is associate placement director and president of the PhD Alumni Association at the City University of New York Graduate School. She has lectured and written extensively on the Holocaust and is the editor of the Latvian Jewish Courier. Among her earlier books is The Unfinished Road, Jewish Survivors of Latvia Look Back (Praeger, 1991), which is the last in a trilogy. The others are Journey Into Terror: Story of the Riga Ghetto and Muted Voices: Jewish Survivors Remember.

?The work is an amalgam of national and personal history intended to illustrate the fate of Austria's Jews. It successfully conveys immediate and usually tragic personal experiences.?-Choice