IAS Book launch: Jewish Refugees in the Balkans,1933-1945

The Balkans provided the escape route for tens of thousands of German Jews, and remained a place of refuge until the Nazis brutally shut it off with the mass murder of Jewish refugees on the so-called Kladovo transport starting in September 1941, which can be considered as the beginning of the Holocaust in Europe. Responding to publications abou the Western European and American exile experience of the Jews after 1933, this book offers comparative insights into the less trodden paths of the persecuted, illuminating the cultural and political context of the Balkan host countries, the response of local Jewish communities, and the reactions of common people and assorted criminals. The Balkans, often marginalised and loathed, emerges in hundreds of personal accounts of survivors gathered here, supplemented by extensive archival research, as a welcoming getaway, where thousands survived thanks to the Italian occupiers, illiterate peasants, and Communist-led Partisan resisters.

Copies of the book will be available for cash purchase at a discounted price after the event.

Author:

Bojan Aleksov is an Associate Professor of South-East European History at the University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

Speakers:

Professor Wendy Bracewell, UCL SSEES

Professor Michael Berkowitz, UCL Hebrew and Jewish Studies

Professor Robert Gildea, Oxford University

This event is hosted by the UCL Institute of Advanced studies.