An award-winning historian presents an emotional history of Jewish refugees biding their time in Portugal as they attempt to escape Nazi Europe. This riveting book describes the experience of Jewish refugees as they fled Hitler to live in limbo in Portugal until they could reach safer havens abroad. Drawing attention not only to the social and physical upheavals of refugee life, Kaplan highlights their feelings as they fled their homes and histories while begging strangers for kindness. An emotional history of fleeing, this book probes how specific locations touched refugees' inner lives, including the borders they nervously crossed or the overcrowded transatlantic ships that signaled their liberation

Discusses the generous proposal of the Dominican government to the Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria to settle in Sosúa against the background of the reluctance of most American countries to take in Jewish refugees. Notes that the USA not only put up "paper walls" in the way of Jewish refugees eager to enter the country, but from April-May 1940 (when the war broke out in Europe) tried to impede Jewish immigration into the Dominican Republic.

Describes the life of Jewish middle-class women in Wilhelmine Germany. Pp. 148-152, "Anti-Semitism in the University, " state that until about 1905 women students, discriminated against because of their sex, tended to show solidarity by forming organizations open to all, in contrast to the segregated male students' organizations. Russian Jewish women were especially despised, even by German Jewish male students. Pp. 182-185 describe discrimination against Jewish teachers, noting that their chances of employment were highly limited. See also the index under "Anti-Semitism."