Unsentimental Journey By Albert Drach, Translated by Harvey I. Dunkle, Afterword by Ernestine Schlant

In this "autobiographical report" Drach describes his flight from the Gestapo through France and the years of his emigration. After breathtaking confrontations with Nazi murderers and their collaborators he succeeds in hiding out in a mountain village near Nice until Allied troops arrive. Drach's inimitable ironic language transmits the atmosphere of exile: anxiety, escape, persecution, bureaucratic arbitrariness, envy, and denunciation. The personalities of his chance companions are just as unforgettable as those of the famous emigrants that he encounters, among them the writers Lion Feuchtwanger, Franz Werfel, and especially Walter Hasenclever, whose suicide in the camp at Les Milles Drach tried to prevent.