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Description
The Balkans provided the escape route for tens of thousands of German Jews, and remained a place of refuge until the Nazis brutally shut it off with the mass murder of Jewish refugees on the so-called Kladovo transport starting in September 1941, which can be considered as the beginning of the Holocaust in Europe. Responding to publications about the Western European and American exile experience of the Jews after 1933, this book offers comparative insights into the less trodden paths of the persecuted, illuminating the cultural and political context of the Balkan host countries, the response of local Jewish communities, and the reactions of common people and assorted criminals. The Balkans, often marginalised and loathed, emerges in hundreds of personal accounts of survivors gathered here, supplemented by extensive archival research, as a welcoming getaway, where thousands survived thanks to the Italian occupiers, illiterate peasants, and Communist-led Partisan resisters.
"A seminal work in Holocaust studies and Balkan World War Two history. Aleksov's comprehensive research, empathetic narrative style and attention to an underexamined chapter of Jewish history fill a significant gap. This work stands as a testament to the power of scholarship to not only inform and educate but also to bear witness to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable challenges."
Giannis Lainas, in Slavonic and East European Review (2024)
"This book is methodologically innovative and excellently researched. It addresses a hitherto neglected, yet important, aspect of Southeast European history and corrects widely-held ideas about the allegedly hopeless xenophobia of the region ... Given the global significance of displacement and the treatment of refugees, the work also offers lessons for the present. One can only hope it finds the widest possible readership."
Ulf Brunnbauer, in Südost-Forschungen (2024)
"Jewish Refugees in the Balkans is an exemplary work of historiography suffused with the poetry of empathy. Aleksov has tirelessly combed dozens of archives, excavated hundreds of interviews, unpublished manuscripts, published memoirs and accounts. A serious, successful (and deserved) effort to restore the subjectivity and agency of Holocaust survivors."
Maria Todorova, in Slavic Review (2025) Bojan Aleksov is an Associate Professor of South-East European History at the University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies.
