Walter's Welcome: The Intimate Story of a German-Jewish Family's Flight from the Nazis to Peru

(Hardback)

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Walter's Welcome is the story of Walter Neisser and the more than fifty members of his family he helped to escape Nazi Germany. The story is told through the letters of the Neisser family, which have been meticulously translated and arranged by Walter's niece, Eva, who also provides moving historical contextualization and commentary. After fleeing Germany, the Neissers resettled in Peru. However, their flight was neither easy nor seamless. Walter worked tirelessly to provide the resources and guidance necessary for the many members of the family to escape, but communications to Europe were frazzled and travel off the continent became increasingly impossible with each passing day, requiring extraordinary will and coordination to contact the correct officials and receive the necessary documentation. The family's letters reveal the toll these efforts put on them and the challenges of waiting and surviving in a foreign land as they tried to hold together.
The story of Jewish escapees to Latin America has only recently begun to be widely explored. This memoir-in-letters explores the difficulties of daily life in this little explored context, as the Neisser family and many other escaped Jews adjusted to a new home and tried to build a new life in the shadow of the many horrific things happening back in the land they'd left behind.

Reviews

This is a fascinating and little-known account how one family clan from among German Jewry found a new home in unusual circumstances in a distant country in which people of such background were seldom welcomed. I am still digesting the books richesand sharing it with others.--Walter Laqueur, historian and bestselling author of Putinism : Russia and its future with the West "This captivating life account of an extended German-Jewish family that survived the Holocaust thanks to the determined efforts by one of its members to bring his relatives to Peru in the 1930s reads like a beautifully conceived epistolary novel. Combining a rich trove of family photographs with an extensive archive of letters, Walters Welcome meshes personal stories with larger histories to render a complex, multifocal contribution to our understanding of the German-Jewish refugee experience in Latin America. . . . A pleasure to read, it manages to instruct and enlighten us while also touching our heart.--Leo Spitzer, author of Hotel Bolivia: The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism, Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor of History Emeritus, Dartmouth College I found Walters Welcome very interesting and absorbingthe letters from both sides of the ocean are informative throughout. And what marvelous photos.--Natalie Zemon Davis, author of The Return of Martin Guerre Who is Walter Neisser A scrappy youth who makes his own welcome in Peru Or is he the patriarch who welcomes those leaving their crumbling lives in Europe In this gripping story, he is both, of course. Candidly and vividly, Echenbergs story preserves and organizes a unique record of the extent of the Jewish diaspora in South America.--Ral Necochea Lpez, historian, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Eva Echenbergs book is a very moving true story of tikkun olamacts of kindness performed to repair the worldin Peru during the turbulent years of World War II by one decent and secular man who saved family and friends from certain death. Walters Welcome is essential reading for all, particularly now, at this time of change.--Gaby Klehmann Winter, interpreter and translator

Author Bio

Eva Neisser Echenberg is a former teacher and author of several textbooks for students of Spanish and French. She holds two MAsone in English and one in Spanishfrom the University of Wisconsin. She has spent the last four years translating from German and Spanish the letters that eventually became Walters Welcome.

Judy Sklar Rasminsky is an award-winning freelance writer and editor, who has coauthored several textbooks and trade titles. Her work has appeared in Readers Digest and the Los Angeles Times, amongst other magazines and newspapers. She has a B.A. in English from Stanford University and an M.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University.