The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught In Between by Michael Dobbs (review)

The subtitle of Michael Dobb's recent book embodies this well-written and carefully documented volume's three main themes: a village in Baden and the two destinations of its Jewish population—America and Auschwitz. The story begins in Kippenheim, moving from the smallest and least-known of the three places that form the book's subjects. Kippenheim is the destination at the book's end, but it is not the same village we meet at the beginning. The buildings look the same, but Stolpersteine—"stumbling stones"—feature in the pavement in front of some houses, indicating that Jewish families once lived there but perished in the Holocaust. Dobbs provides ample information about what these stones represent, including the struggle to include Kippenheim's Jews in the town's larger history. But another destination in the troika—Auschwitz—pervades the narrative with a sense of foreboding.

In the first chapter, Dobbs introduces some of Kippenheim's Jewish families by name. We get to know them, their business relationships to the village, and their connections to the school in the nearby town of Ettenheim. Kippenheim's earlier history could hardly have been more ordinary or safe: before Hitler's arrival in power in 1933, the village was home to 144 Jews, mostly shopkeepers and general merchants who had lived there for decades in a peaceful relationship with their Christian neighbors. The opening sentence (p. 3) reminds the reader of the escalating dangers for Jews in 1938: "Hedy Wachenheimer cycled down Adolf-Hitler-Strasse on her way to school," dismounting at the edge of the village before a sign proclaiming, "Jews are unwanted here."

Having introduced the reader to families like Hedy's, Dobbs carefully depicts the repercussions of the new regime on this peace-loving community, focusing on changing attitudes among the neighbors, in school rooms, and at places of business. The nationwide pogrom of Kristallnacht on November 9/10, 1938 shattered homes and synagogues in every Jewish community of Germany. Initially hesitant to leave, viewing the new regime as a temporary aberration, Kippenheim's Jewish families were finally forced to accept the irreversibility of their new status as the "unwanted," and begin their quest to emigrate. Their efforts to reach the United States or some other haven form the subject of a large portion of the book. Dobb's background in investigative journalism is singularly effective as he exposes the inner workings of a bureaucratic system in the USA, and its consular offices in Germany in particular, especially in Stuttgart, where the overall refusal rate for visas in June 1938 reached 60 percent. He does not spare anyone in the hierarchy, from the inept consular clerk, through the upper echelons of the U.S. State Department, to the office of the President, keenly attuned to public approval. Dobbs documents antisemitism and anti-immigrant sentiment, especially directed against German Jews, often (and ironically) treated as potential German fifth columnists. In Germany they were considered "stateless" subjects, but in the U.S. they were still seen as Germans. Dobbs's nuanced depiction reaches to the exceptional people who stand out against a bleak gallery of petty bigotry and corruption, as well as to the tireless members of both Jewish and Christian aid organizations.

Several strands of history weave the Jewish community of Kippenheim with better-known events. The ill-fated MS St. Louis that sailed from Hamburg in May 1939 to Cuba with 937 mostly Jewish passengers included several former residents of Kippenheim. The Nazis' deportation of the Jews of Kippenheim was itself part of the October 1940 deportation of some 6,000 Jews from villages and towns throughout Baden. Though that "Aktion" was not the author's focus, The Unwanted may generate interest in those other locales during the Holocaust. It should also stir interest in Gurs, the French internment camp originally set up for Spanish Civil War refugees that under the collaborationist Vichy regime...