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When Europe Was a Prison Camp

Father and Son Memoirs 1940–1941

Otto Schrag , Peter Schrag
Otto Schrag and his son Peter fled Nazi-occupied Belgium in 1940, yet both have very different stories to tell. Otto fled to the South of France where, as a Jew, he was interned in a French concentration camp at Saint-Cyprien; ten-year-old Peter, meanwhile, escaped to Boulogne with his mother and grandmother, sheltering in a cellar while the city was bombed. This book combines Otto’s novel-like recollections, written in 1941, with Peter’s thoughtful memoir compiled 40 years later.
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Product information:
  • Publisher: Indiana UP
  • Year: 2015
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 326pp
  • Illustrated: Yes
  • Dimensions: 225x147mm
  • ISBN: 9780253017697
  • Condition: New
  • Weight: 1.6kg
Product code:
508079
Product information
Full publisher description
In a compelling approach to storytelling, When Europe Was a Prison Camp weaves together two accounts of a family's eventual escape from Occupied Europe. One, a memoir written by the father in 1941; the other, begun by the son in the 1980s, fills in the story of himself and his mother, supplemented by historical research. The result is both personal and provocative, involving as it does issues of history and memory, fiction and "truth," courage and resignation. This is not a "Holocaust memoir." The Schrags were Jews, and Otto was interned, under execrable conditions, in southern France. But Otto, with the help of a heroic wife, escaped the camp before the start of massive transfers of prisoners "to the East," and Peter and his mother escaped from Belgium before the Jews were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz. Yet, the danger and suffering, the comradeship and betrayal, the naive hopes and cynical despair of those in prison and those in peril are everywhere in evidence.
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