... a heartbreaking and timely read ... With a reporter’s eye for narrative and a historian’s attention to detail and context, Dobbs re-creates Jewish life in Kippenheim, a German village near the French border, on the eve of the Nazi onslaught. Then, thanks to a trove of carefully assembled archival material, photographs and oral histories, he follows these Jewish families through harrowing cycles of deportation and desperation as they attempt to flee to safety ... There are times when Dobbs’s precise recounting of the byzantine immigration process becomes tedious — but, of course, that was the point ... It’s not possible to read The Unwanted without hearing its echoes today.
Dobbs weaves the tales of their declining fortunes with a carefully researched account of American attitudes and policies toward Europe’s Jewish refugees ... What’s most chilling about Dobbs’s book is how his account of the early years of World War II echoes our politics today ... When current policies and opinions so closely resemble those held during Hitler’s early days, one wonders, too, if the moral clarity of 'never again' may have been fleeting. In raising those questions, Dobbs’s book provides a glimpse of how we may be judged by future generations.
Mr. Dobbs affectingly braids three separate narratives into one ... devastating ... Mr. Dobbs... chronicles in meticulous, suspenseful detail the desperate perseverance of one Kippenheim family after another to find an escape from Nazi Europe. These stories—recovered and reconstructed through letters, memoirs, family photographs, visa documents and oral histories—make up the book’s most wrenching sections.
Dobbs transforms an extremely painful, violent, and devastating event into a narrative of survival, compassion, and perseverance ... Dobbs excels at showing the interrelatedness of Kippenheim, Nazi Germany, and the U.S. while maintaining a chronological narrative. While his language can be academic at times, the overall and always timely message is clear and simple: countries must be supported and held accountable as they take in and protect refugees, and we must all learn from the past. Through the stories of various families told from multiple points of view, the reader learns how difficult decisions were made and how, no matter the circumstances, devotion to the survival of family and faith was vital. With a deeply moving conclusion, Dobbs’ account is highly recommended for all readers interested in WWII, the politics of hate, genocide, the plight of refugees, and society’s responsibilities.
... reads like a combination family history and national tragedy on two continents. It includes tales of heroism and sacrifice, ambition infected by evil, and politics tainted by corruption and ineptitude, and maybe worse, indifference. The British statesman Edmund Burke said it best: 'All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.' In the end, The Unwanted is a call to action for good men and women everywhere. It is imperative that we heed the call.
Through Dobbs’ richly detailed narrative, we come to care deeply for the Wachenheimers, Valfers, Wertheimers and Auerbachers as they confront each new barrier to their salvation ... This is more than the history of one town: Kippenheim stands in for the thousands upon thousands of other villages, shtetls and neighborhoods that disappeared in the wake of the Holocaust. Dobbs’ book reminds us that the Nazis and their allies murdered not only individuals but also the webs of friendship, commerce, culture and religion that make a community. This is also a cautionary tale of what happens when human lives are sacrificed in the name of political ideology and bigotry—a lesson that resonates today.
In this potent, focused history, Dobbs tells the alternately heart-wrenching and uplifting story of the Kippenheim Jews who entered the tangle of bureaucracy involved in the efforts to obtain visas and flee Germany ... In his thorough research, the author discovered many instances of those who bent the rules to help—e.g., tireless organizations like the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Rescue Board as well as many brave individuals—and he generously shares those stories with readers in the hopes that we will never forget what happened to the thousands of 'unwanted' refugees who fled the Nazi killing machine ... A welcome addition to Holocaust literature that remains relevant to our current isolationist times.
