Synopsis
There is no doubt that strange ways have been found to evade the Nazi regime of terror, and autobiographies of survivors are laced with chance events and incredible stories that made survival possible, and they have more angles than could commonly be believed or imagined over fifty years later. A very special story is told by Werner Barasch, whose life, from early on, was quite evidently guided by a single objective: to flee from Nazi Germany, to survive. The pursuit of this objective was approached with consistent rationality, and has required the application of well conceived strategies, as shown in his autobiographical sketches, and of which one took a leading role: the utilization of language - or, more precisely, of languages; because the itinerary that Barasch had to take from Germany led through several countries: Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain, and eventually America. Werner, a reticent teenager, goes to Italy with his mother to be schooled in an excellent prep school and learns Italian, a foundation of his treasury of languages which contributed to saving his life, and maybe to his logical thinking and thus to undertaking his survival as a strategic enterprise. The seriousness the author has shown in the pursuit of his objective is impressive, as well as the detachment with which he describes his own life. Not that things went along without problems, as it might sound from the summary. Barasch writes of suffering from nightmares for years, until one particular dream provided an end to them. Nor that the story proceeded simply, painlessly, or in compliance with his pursuits, but there is always a dominant rationality that seems almost startling: for example, the description of the behavior of German refugee-prisoners in the French Camp Argeles, who, after the French guards had abandoned the camp because of the advancing German front: "Among the refugees mass panic broke out - they ran about inside the camp like madmen, until the Germans came." He comments: "There was a complete breakdown of logical thinking, the first and indispensable requisite for survival. No need to mention that the lack of initiative meant death in an extermination camp - but would the victims really have believed it?" Translated from the German monthly "Die Mahnung" (Reminders). "Entronnen" the author's German version, was placed on the recommended reading list in schools by the German Department of Education in Berlin and by most state and local school authorities.
