In 1940, Varian Fry--a Harvard educated American journalist--traveled to Marseille carrying three thousand dollars and a list of imperiled artists and writers he hoped to rescue within a few weeks. Instead, he ended up staying in France for thirteen months, working under the veil of a legitimate relief organization to procure false documents, amass emergency funds, and set up an underground railroad that led over the Pyrenees, into Spain, and finally...

"In 1945, Jewish refugees by the thousands set out for Palestine. Those who made it relied on the underground to shelter them; taking false names, they blended with the population, joining the wildly different factions fighting for independence. "City of Secrets" follows one survivor, Brand, as he tries to regain himself after losing everyone he's ever loved. Now driving a taxi provided--like his new identity--by the underground, he navigates the...

Explores the lives of Dr. Franz Adler and his wife Sunny, who're forced in 1943 China to relocate to a one-square-kilometer called Shanghai Ghetto, where heat, hunger, and tropical diseases are constant threats. But the ghetto also breeds miraculous resilience: music, theater, sports, and Jewish culture thrive despite what are at times subhuman conditions.

"1955 in New York City, the city of progress. But in the Perlman residence, the past is as close as the present. Rachel Perlman, a child of Berlin and an artist bearing her mother's legacy, arrives in New York as part of the wave of Jewish Displaced persons who managed to survive the brutalities of the war. But despite her efforts, Rachel is unable to live the "normal" life of an American housewife, not until she can shake the ghosts of her past and...