Exit Berlin: How One Woman Saved Her Family from Nazi Germany / Charlotte Bonelli 293 pp.

Bonelli is an archivist who researched the letters of Luzie Hecht, a longtime employee of the American Jewish Committee, and in so doing uncovered an important wartime story.    Luzie was a 27-year-old Berliner, from a comfortable but not wealthy Jewish family.  In 1938, having for months seen her employment prospects dim in Germany, she left Berlin with the assistance of a wealthy American cousin, Arnold Hatch.  (Hecht, anglicized)  Over the next several years, she maintained copious correspondence with a host of relatives and friends in Germany, her file being distinctive because she kept copies of her own letters as well as those she received.  She made strenuous efforts to assist and advise this wide circle who was left behind, with no financial means of her own.

I sort of fell in love with Luzie while reading her letters. Although she succeeded in directing her immediate family to New York via an 18-month stay in Shanghai, most of her remaining correspondents would perish.  This was no fault of Luzie's, of course.  She was a penniless immigrant in New York who had only her distant relative in Albany to rely on.  It was her role as cheerleader to all those left behind, so evident in her letters, that was quite moving.  I can only imagine how important her many letters were to those who received them. Bonelli's arrangement and explication was far less interesting than the letters themselves; still I am grateful for her work in bringing them to light.