Escape through the Pyrenees

Jewish leftists raised in Berlin, Lisa Fiffko and her husband, Hans, became active members of the anti-Fascist German resistance. They fled the Gestapo in 1933 to what they though was the safety of La France genereuse. To the French, however, they and thousands of other German émigrés represented a grave political threat. In much the same way that the United States interned Japanese immigrants at the height of the war hysteria, French authorities rounded up the reviled boches and crowded them into filthy and isolated concentration camps.

As Hitler's army swept through France, Fittko and her imprisoned comrades seized their chance to escape. But life outside the camp was as full of danger and deprivation as that within: with the Gestapo bent on finding and punishing the émigré "traitors," and the French obligated by the terms of the armistice to turn them in, every move waiy88uys a matter of life and death. Survival under these conditions required a new approach to thought and action; those who asked "What will happen to me?" instead of "What can I do?" were increasingly doomed.

Reunited at least near the foot of the Pyrenees in unoccupied southern France, Lisa and Hans were determined to make their way out of the country. While waiting for the proper papers, Lisa agreed to help spirit the philosopher Water Benjamin across the border into Spain. Soon she and Hans were regularly guiding small groups of refugees to safety along a torturous route through the mountains. Through their efforts, hundreds of refugees escaped deportations, torture, and death at the hands of the Nazis.

B>About the Authors:
Lisa Fittko was born in 1909. She and her husband fled France in 1941, settled in Cuba for a time, and immigrated to the United States in 1948. Today the author lives in Chicago, where she writes and is active in the peace movement.

David Koblick is most recently the translator of Winnetou.

Though it reads as a suspense novel, Escape through the Pyrenees is Lisa Fittko's extraordinary memoir of life as an "enemy alien" in France before and after the German invasion of 1949.

Jewish leftists raised in Berlin, Lisa Fiffko and her husband, Hans, became active members of the anti-Fascist German resistance. They fled the Gestapo in 1933 to what they though was the safety of La France genereuse. To the French, however, they and thousands of other German émigrés represented a grave political threat. In much the same way that the United States interned Japanese immigrants at the height of the war hysteria, French authorities rounded up the reviled boches and crowded them into filthy and isolated concentration camps.

As Hitler's army swept through France, Fittko and her imprisoned comrades seized their chance to escape. But life outside the camp was as full of danger and deprivation as that within: with the Gestapo bent on finding and punishing the émigré "traitors," and the French obligated by the terms of the armistice to turn them in, every move waiy88uys a matter of life and death. Survival under these conditions required a new approach to thought and action; those who asked "What will happen to me?" instead of "What can I do?" were increasingly doomed.

Reunited at least near the foot of the Pyrenees in unoccupied southern France, Lisa and Hans were determined to make their way out of the country. While waiting for the proper papers, Lisa agreed to help spirit the philosopher Water Benjamin across the border into Spain. Soon she and Hans were regularly guiding small groups of refugees to safety along a torturous route through the mountains. Through their efforts, hundreds of refugees escaped deportations, torture, and death at the hands of the Nazis.

B>About the Authors:
Lisa Fittko was born in 1909. She and her husband fled France in 1941, settled in Cuba for a time, and immigrated to the United States in 1948. Today the author lives in Chicago, where she writes and is active in the peace movement.

David Koblick is most recently the translator of Winnetou.