Escape through the Balkans

Irene Grunbaum was a German Jew married to a Serbian Jew and living in Belgrade when World War II and the German army overwhelmed Yugoslavia. This work is the account - written shortly after the war from a new home in Brazil - of her escape from the Germans and their collaborators through the Balkans to a temporary haven in Italian-occupied Albania.

Grunbaum's husband did not escape. With most of the Balkan Jews, he perished in a concentration camp. Safer in Albania - the Italians were not rounding up Jews and indeed had only tenuous control in their regions of occupation - the author had to contend with murderously contentious partisans, bandits and smugglers, fascists of various persuasions, the risks of being female, and the dislocations of war in a poor country. After the war, Grunbaum made her way to Italy, which was not in much better shape.

There she attempted to secure a haven, eventually finding refuge in Brazil. Grunbaum's autobiography casts light on a complex, little-known, and savagely brutal corner of Europe in World War II. Her story is a vivid description of ethnic hatred and ancient rivalries - and how human compassion can sometimes transcend both.