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Salvate Il Mio Bambino (2014)

by Steven Pressman(Favorite Author)

3.91 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Piemme

review 1: This is a fascinating, true story of a well-to-do American Jewish couple, Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, who work together with a doctor and a fraternal group named Brith Sholom to bring 50 Jewish children from Vienna, Austria to the U.S. in the months preceding the break-out of World War II. While Great Britain admitted 10,000 Jewish children to their country as part of the "Kindertransport" effort, only 1,000 or so came to America, and the Kraus group was the largest. Pressman--who also made a documentary movie about this topic--alternates between the Krauses efforts in the U.S., the children and their families in Vienna, and the virulent anti-Semitism and anti-immigration attitudes of many in Congress and the U.S. State Department. It's quite clear that the often-repeate... mored idea that Americans would have done more if they had known more is false; Pressman quotes liberally from major American newspapers about the events occurring in Europe during the 1930s, and unfortunately the issues that confronted the Krauses and their friends have not changed that much in the last 80 years except for location.
review 2: This is an interesting book for what it isn't: It's not a gripping Schindler's List kind of tale. There are no midnight escapes. No close calls. Instead, the villains (aside from the Nazi's) are bureaucrats and apathy. And the heroes are most definitely ordinary. Their success hinged on finding and exploiting a loophole in the Byzantine immigration rules of the 1930s. Neither spouse was actively engaged in getting Jews out of Germany in advance of WW II. They were just your typical civic-minded upper middle class couple. Their success involved no pleas to prominent politicians. Instead, they found this loophole, and exploited it with help from some mid-level embassy officials. Take the time to ponder the reaction of some Jewish groups involved in attempting the same thing. And don't get too distracted by the odd moments. Not certain about the decision to include details about the couple's romantic weekend in Paris in the midst of their efforts. And it definitely did not dive into the details of why they chose the children they did. Since it is partly based on the wife's memoirs it is possible she chose not to record what were surely some painful choices. In the end, though, it is a celebration of the everyday hero -- the person who takes a risk and comes away having completed an epic mitzvah. The Krauses' story certainly deserves to be read. less

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