cover image Between Worlds: 2in Czechoslovakia, England, and America

Between Worlds: 2in Czechoslovakia, England, and America

Susan G. Bell. Dutton Books, $18.95 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-525-93314-4

In this affecting memoir, Bell, born in the Sudetenland, a German-speaking Czechoslovakian Jew, describes the ethnic and religious limbo into which she, a schoolgirl, was propelled when the Nazis took over her homeland in 1938. She and her mother found refuge in England; her father, who remained, died in a work camp. Bell recalls the cultured world she lost when she became a refugee, a world never restored, even when she returned to Communist Czechoslovakia. Other events brought her to northern California, where her adult education flourished and where she is president of the Pacific Coast branch of the National Conference of British Historians. Stoic acceptance and a doughty resilience are the underpinnings of this personal footnote to a history of persecution. (July)