Escaping Hitler: A Jewish Haven in Chile

Acknowledgments

acknowledgments my motivation for writing this book is to thank chile for saving my life, those of my family members, and the lives of so many more. at the same time, i wish to tell about my family’s journey and those of other families from nazi germany to chile, a country that offered so many of us a haven and the possibility of starting our lives anew. Emigration has always existed and will continue to exist far into the future. Each catastrophe will create new waves of people looking for a haven. There are so many who helped me bring this book to light. First of all i want to thank my parents for getting me out of the nazi inferno and for keeping diaries of that terrible time. Those were the first accounts i read about nazi germany. and the more i read, the more i wanted to know. although only a small child when i arrived in chile, i feel part of the Jewish emigration to this south american country and i am deeply thankful to president aguirre cerda, who opened the doors to us, and to the chilean people in the 1930s who welcomed us into their midst, where “el asilo contra la opresión” (a haven against oppression) was and is part of the chorus of their national anthem. The book that impressed me most when i started reading about the nazis was víctor Farías’s Los Nazis en Chile, mentioned here frequently. His research is most impressive and what i learned about the nazis in chile overwhelmed me. i thank all my interviewees, who made this book so much more interesting with their incredible stories. Those whom i visited in their homes in chile gave me their time, their tea, and homemade pastries (a chilean custom). Those from israel and one special person who had moved on to australia told me their remembrances by e-mail. my aunt, lisa goldschmidt Hirsch, gave me the names of many of her friends and acquaintances in chile to inter- x / acknowledgments view, and some of the interviewees in santiago gave me their friends’ names. it took me several winter visits to chile to interview them and i loved doing it. a big thank-you to mark Wyman, who helped me with the manuscript in every way possible. also a big thank-you to my editor, Joseph powell, who always seemed so enthusiastic, encouraging, and interested and was so helpful in getting my manuscript published. Without his interest this book would not have come out at this time, or maybe it would never have been published at all. Thanks to my friend magdalena Fuentes, who helped me with research at the Biblioteca nacional in santiago, chile; to sra. Ximena cruzat, director of the Biblioteca nacional; and sra. antonieta palma, head of the department of restoration and conservation, for giving us permission to look at the Jewish newspaper Mundo Judío, although it was then in the process of being restored . Thanks to sra. marcela cavada ramírez, coordinator of chile’s national archives; to Brigitte altmann, who interviewed some of the immigrants even before i started with my project; and to Frau Elsbeth appelbaum, from my mother’s hometown of Burgsteinfurt, who sent me newspaper clipping after newspaper clipping with information or stories about the Jews who had lived there. Thanks also to steinfurt historian ingeborg Hötting, whom i met on my visit to the town, for sending book excerpts with information on the Jews in Burgsteinfurt during the nazi regime; to caroline Waddell, from the united states Holocaust memorial museum, for her help with illustrations; to Ellen goetz Kaufmann for her assistance in locating the interviewees from chile to get permission to use their stories; to my brother mario goldschmidt, who assisted me with getting illustrations from germany; and to dan Kriel in israel for suggesting i should include the chapter on the immigration of young Jews from chile to israel. my heartfelt thanks to each of them. Escaping HitlEr ...