Narrow Foothold

The author of this memoir of escape from Nazi occupied Europe was Carina Birman (1895-1996), the Conseil Juridique at the Austrian Embassy in Paris between 1926 and 1938. It tells of her escape with her friend Sophie Lippmann (1885-1975) over the Pyrenees through Spain and Portugal and eventually to New York. The memoir is fascinating, not just as a testimony of escape from Nazi occupied Paris 1939, but also as an account of the last day of the life of the celebrated philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin. It provides additional corroborative detail of the circumstances surrounding Benjamin's last journey as well as his state of mind during the last night of his life. It also shows the desperate plight of the refugees and the corruption of Spanish border officials. The memoir was written in 1975, but never published during the author's lifetime. The typescript was only found recently and this is its first publication.--publisher's description.