50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission Into the Heart of Nazi Germany
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: ebook
ISBN-13: 9780062237491
Description: From the Introduction...

The broad outline of what Gil and Eleanor Kraus, my wife's maternal grandparents, had accomplished in the spring of 1939 was not exactly a secret. Family members had long been aware of the couple's daring voyage into Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust and their return to the United States with fifty Jewish children in their care. For the rest of their lives, however, neither of them spoke in any detail with family or friends about their unlikely adventure. They certainly offered no clues that explained how--or why--a Jewish couple from Philadelphia wound up in Nazi-controlled Vienna determined to rescue children whose lives were at stake.

Eleanor, however, had written it all down. At some point she typed out a richly detailed account of a seemingly far-fetched plan that began with a simple discussion between her husband, Gil, and his friend Louis Levine, the head of a national Jewish fraternal organization called Brith Sholom. At first glance, the typewritten pages read like an improbable, if not impossible, product of a vivid imagination.

Incredibly, the rescue mission took place precisely as Eleanor described it. In fact, its full historical significance extended well beyond her own account. The fifty boys and girls whose lives were saved by Gil and Eleanor Kraus comprised the largest single known group of children, traveling without their parents, who were legally admitted into the United States during the Holocaust.
Table of contents: label: Dedication; label: Epigraph; label: Introduction; label: Part I
title: The Plan; label: Chapter 1; label: Chapter 2; label: Chapter 3; label: Chapter 4; label: Chapter 5; label: Chapter 6; label: Chapter 7; label: Chapter 8; label: Chapter 9; label: Part II
title: The Rescue; label: Chapter 10; label: Chapter 11; label: Chapter 12; label: Chapter 13; label: Chapter 14; label: Chapter 15; label: Chapter 16; label: Chapter 17; label: Chapter 18; label: Chapter 19; label: Chapter 20; label: Chapter 21; label: Part III
title: New Lives; label: Chapter 22; label: Chapter 23; label: Chapter 24; label: Epilogue; label: The Fifty Children; label: Afterword; label: Acknowledgments; label: Notes; label: Bibliography; label: List of Illustrations; label: Index; label: About the Author; label: Also by Steven Pressman; label: Credits; label: Copyright