In 1940, all Varian Fry knew about being a secret agent was what he'd seen in the movies. But soon he was undercover in France, smuggling people blacklisted by Hitler to freedom. Told in his own words, this is the exciting story of one man who had the courage to try to change history. - Publisher.

"Borderline Citizen is part travelogue, part memoir, part reportage, and part exploration of the unique shards of international territory cut from their "motherlands," as well as people whose sense of patriotism or nationalism has been strengthened or cut adrift by circumstance and history"--

Story of the underground organization set up by Americans in France to rescue anti-nazis from the Gestapo

When Britain was compelled to introduce conscription in 1916, the question arose of what to do with its 'friendly aliens'-its 30,000 Russian-Jewish refugees of military age. The Tsar didn't want them back to serve in his army, and they had no desire to help his war effort. But when sections of the British press commented that as asylum seekers they should show gratitude and join up, a campaign with strong anti-Semitic overtones took off and became Parliamentary business. Then the Tsar was overthrown, and by the summer of 1917 the question was settled with the new regime: Russian Jews of military age had to choose either to join the British Army or to return to Russia to serve there. MI5 and Special Branch kept watch on the Communist Club in the West End, where Russian revolutionaries agitated tailors, cobblers and cabinet-makers who agonised over what to do. Many ended up in the British Army or were exempted for war work, but nearly 4,000 chose to go back to Russia-for a variety of reasons. Arriving there via the Arctic within weeks and days of the Bolshevik revolution, they found a vacuum of authority, which soon turned into the chaos and dangers of civil war. How they fared and how they struggled to return to their families in Britain is the story of War or Revolution. With the help of personal documents, official British and Russian archives, and interviews of survivors and their families, the author illuminates an unknown corner of the First World War and sets it against the background of the period.

This book was written in 1940, but never published. The authors had held, until May 1940, responsible positions in the Czech Refugee Trust Fund, which brought political refugees (including large numbers of communists) to Britain. In May 1940 they were dismissed from their posts by the Home Office due to their political affiliations. The introduction (pp. ix-xxvi) relates the history of the authors and their book, which is a critique of British prewar and wartime immigration policy. 65,000 refugees from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia immigrated to Britain in 1933-39; 90% of them were "racial refugees" - i.e. Jews or part-Jews. Describes the events that impelled these people to leave the Reich. Dwells on the hardships and social discrimination which confronted the refugees in Britain both before and during the war. In April 1940 an internment campaign was launched; many refugees were interned in camps in the country or in the dominions. Discusses the legal aspects of the reception of refugees in Britain. Compares the ordeals of refugees in Britain with those in France, where the situation was much worse.

Focuses on the lives of the children of wartime immigrants, whose perceptions and experiences of both the old and the new world were very different from their parents'. At school, in the neighbourhood, or on the sportsfield, many of them were painfully aware of being 'outsiders' in a society unused to cultural diversity. Yet their need to belong was frequently complicated by loyalty to the very different ideals and expectations of their parents. Based on a wide range of interviews as well as documentary evidence from second-generation refugees worldwide, this is an account of the lives of immigrant children growing up in the decades between the 1940s and the 1960s.

At 41, single professor Sara Leader decides to create a family by adopting a child. After the adoption agency asks for details about her background, Sara reluctantly begins to probe her father's secret history — in particular, his flight as a 17–year–old Holocaust refugee aboard a ship denied entry into America. The more she learns about her father's past, the more Sara feels the need to question him about what happened — and the more she realizes how her father's secrets have shaped her own life. Alternating between a teenage boy's energetic letters to Eleanor Roosevelt and a daughter's sifting through the fragments of her father's traumatic wartime choices, Victoria Redel brilliantly imbues her characters with not only bravery and strength but with the humor to survive the pain of the past and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.