Following the experiences of German-speaking emigrants and refugees in Balkan countries between 1933 and 1941, Marie-Janine Calic’s book Balkan-Odyssee, 1933–1941: Auf der Flucht vor Hitler durch Südosteuropa breaks new ground in exploring how political events and local conditions shaped refugee experiences. Calic interweaves personal stories, major historical events, lesser-known occurrences, and attempted rescue operations into a compelling narrative of the Balkans’ role in providing a temporary haven and escape route for refugees. In so doing, she brings a complex and largely untold history to life.
At least 55,000 refugees, Jews and non-Jews, artists, laborers, conservatives, communists, Zionists, internationalists, and resistance fighters, fled to Yugoslavia alone during this period. Most found themselves stranded without connections, language skills, or financial means as they tried to escape to Palestine or overseas. Using newly discovered sources such as diaries, letters, and organizational records, Calic provides insights into their lived experiences. Some of the individuals highlighted are theater star Tilla Durieux and her husband Ludwig Katzenellenbogen (Lutz), writer Manès Sperber, painter Richard Ziegler, playwright Franz Theodor Csoker, and Mossad agent Ruth Aliav-Klüger. Also featured are those who found refuge in the Dalmatian fishing village of Zaton Mali, including Annemarie Wolff-Richter, a special education teacher with her entire children’s home. The unfolding of their stories over the course of the book conveys the fear, drama, terror, suspense, homesickness, uncertainty, hope, and relief that they must have felt along the way.
Calic also intersperses accounts of political events that directly impacted their lives, including the assassination of Yugoslavian king Alexander and French foreign minister Louis Barthou in 1934, the “Anschluss” and November Pogrom of 1938, the Aliyah Bet activities, the sinking of the “Patria” and other vessels, the coup and subjugation of Romania, and the German invasion of the Kingdom of Greece in October 1940. The mounting tensions among the various parties involved in rescuing Jews and fighting the Nazis come vividly to light.
The book is organized chronologically into six sections: “Escape,” “Somewhere Down There,” “Persecuted and Expelled,” “Every Man for Himself,” “The Noose Tightens,” and “The Game is Over.” It concludes with an Epilogue that describes the events that followed the invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece. The stories of Tilla Durieux and Ludwig Katzenellenbogen are highlighted throughout. The book begins with their escape from Berlin on 31 March 1933 on the eve of the Nazi anti-Jewish boycott and ends with an account of their fates.
The narrative provides details of the circumstances of the refugees’ escapes from Germany to Yugoslavia, how the exiles viewed their new surroundings and coped with their situations, the growing stream of refugees resulting from the “Anschluss” and the November Pogrom in 1938, the paths to Palestine that ran through the Balkans and the many disastrous voyages that ensued, the shadow wars fought by Germany and Britain to get Romania and Yugoslavia on their respective sides, and the German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece sealing the Balkan route. The story that emerges is one of initial hope and adjustment on the part of most exiles followed by surmounting obstacles, challenges, disappointment, despair, and tragedy.
Two stories that Calic follows over the course of the book were those of Wolff-Richter’s children’s home and the tragic Kladovo transport. Wolff-Richter had established a children’s home in Berlin in 1926. When the Nazis came to power, she ran the home privately and took in the children of persecuted, imprisoned, or exiled friends. She was arrested in March 1933 and held in protective custody to be transferred to a concentration camp. Her friends managed to have her released, and she left Germany illegally by skiing across the border through the Riesengebirge (Giant Mountains). Her daughter and 12 other children from the home reached Dalmatia by different routes, and she reestablished the children’s home in Zaton Mali. Later she moved it to a suburb of Zagreb, attaining a work permit by marrying a Bosnian Muslim.
The Kladovo refugees had traveled to the Yugoslav border on their way to Palestine. With no vessel available to take them onward, the 1,200 Kladovo refugees remained stranded on the Danube for over 9 months before being transported to Šabac, a small Serbian town. All attempted solutions to bring them to Palestine ended in disappointment. Only a group of 207 Zionist youth was able to secure immigration certificates and ultimately reach Palestine. By telling the story through the eyes of the refugees themselves, Calic conveys their frustration and agony as they faced disappointment after disappointment.
The chronological organization of the material leads to some jumping back and forth from the individuals’ stories, making it somewhat confusing to follow all the various threads and see how everything connects. Maps and a list of principal characters at the end do help readers keep track of the many people and places mentioned in the book. Still, the book might benefit from more reflection on how everything ties together. One wonders, for example, if there is a reason why these particular people ended up in the Balkans and not elsewhere. Is it by chance, or is there some underlying pattern that led them there? How did their experiences compare to those of refugees in other places? What does this material contribute to understanding the Holocaust, the Balkans, and human nature?
Nevertheless, Balkan-Odyssee makes an important contribution to scholarship by bringing the “Balkan route” to light and restoring the lost stories of many of those who fled there. By focusing attention on the lived experiences of the refugees, Calic shows that, despite the unhappy ending for most, the Balkans provided at least a temporary haven where they took in new experiences and carried on with their lives, loves, dreams, and passions.
