The Unwanted ― America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught in Between

The powerfully told story of a group of German Jews desperately seeking American visas to escape the Nazis, and an illuminating account of America's struggle with the refugee crisis caused by the rise of Hitler. Official tie-in to the U.S. Holocaust Museum multi-year exhibit

In October 1940 the Gestapo expelled 6,504 Jews from southwest Germany, creating the first "Jewish free zone" in the Third Reich. These people were sent to a camp in unoccupied France where only one in four managed to gain entry to foreign countries; the others perished there or, later, in Auschwitz. Nearly all of them had been trying for years to secure American visas. Among them were Jews from the village of Kippenheim, and it is they who are at the heart of this book. Drawing on previously unused letters, interviews, and diaries, Michael Dobbs gives us a uniquely vivid picture of what it was like to live among increasingly hostile neighbors and former friends, waiting for the American visa that never came. And he recounts the debates over the fate of these refugees that were simultaneously happening at the highest level of the American government: FDR and his advisers were torn between humanitarian impulses, the risks of entering a European war, and the isolationist instincts of the American public. Here is the riveting and wrenching story of a small community, behind-the-scenes political maneuvering, and the terrible decisions the world faced in confronting the Nazi threat.

Michael Dobbs was born in Belfast, Ireland, and educated at the University of York, with fellowships at Princeton and Harvard. He spent much of his career as a reporter for The Washington Post, for which he covered the collapse of communism. His previous books include Six Months in 1945, One Minute to Midnight, and Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, which was a finalist for the 1997 PEN award for nonfiction. He lives in Maryland.