The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught In Between

By Michael Dobbs

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, a riveting story of Jewish families seeking to escape Nazi Germany.

In 1938, on the eve of World War II, the American journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote that "a piece of paper with a stamp on it" was "the difference between life and death." The Unwanted is the intimate account of a small village on the edge of the Black Forest whose Jewish families desperately pursued American visas to flee the Nazis. Battling formidable bureaucratic obstacles, some make it to the United States while others are unable to obtain the necessary documents. Some are murdered in Auschwitz, their applications for American visas still "pending."
     Drawing on previously unpublished letters, diaries, interviews, and visa records, Michael Dobbs provides an illuminating account of America's response to the refugee crisis of the 1930s and 1940s. He describes the deportation of German Jews to France in October 1940, along with their continuing quest for American visas. And he re-creates the heated debates among U.S. officials over whether or not to admit refugees amid growing concerns about "fifth columnists," at a time when the American public was deeply isolationist, xenophobic, and antisemitic.
     A Holocaust story that is both German and American, The Unwanted vividly captures the experiences of a small community struggling to survive amid tumultuous world events.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781524733209

Michael Dobbs

Bestselling author Michael Dobbs was at Mrs Thatcher’s side as she took her first step into Downing Street as Prime Minister and was a key aide to John Major when he was voted out. In between times he was bombed in Brighton, banished from Chequers and blamed for failing to secoure a Blair-Major television debate. He is now one of the country’s leading political commentators.

Reviews for The Unwanted

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an account of the Jewish inhabitants of a small German village and their desperate attempts to emigrate from the hostile environment beginning with the rise of Hitler before it was too late. I had never realized how difficult it was for Jews to leave Germany during that time, and how many obstacles the US put in their way, severely limiting the number of visas and making even those few visas extremely difficult to obtain. After the US entered the war in 1941, it became even more difficult to obtain a visa, since the Jews in German were viewed as enemy aliens. And I simply had not realized how rampant anti-Semitism was at the time, even in the US.This is an eye-opening and heartbreaking book.