My Life in Germany Before and After January 30, 1933

Book excerpt: This collection of memoirs by refugees from Nazi Germany is a rich source of autobiographical information on the Nazi era. Housed at Houghton Library of Harvard University, it consists of 263 files containing the memoirs of approximately 230 people who lived in Germany or Austria during the 1930s. The stories of the memoirists encompass an almost bewildering range of human experience. The authors come from Danzig and Berlin, from central Germany and the Southwest, from Munich and from Vienna. They are Jews and Catholics and Protestants, and mixtures of these all-too-neat categories in their origins and marriages. They are peddlers and professors, machinists and lawyers, private housewives and public activists. They are conservatives and liberals and Communists. The strongest common bond was their exile.