Skip to main content

Asylum: A Survivor's Flight from Nazi-Occupied Vienna Through Wartime France

Review

Asylum: A Survivor's Flight from Nazi-Occupied Vienna Through Wartime France

Moriz Scheyer was a clear-thinking, discerning and well-intentioned man. He was also successful and kind. In his own words, to him, the most agonizing part of being a refugee was requiring assistance viewed as a subsidy and not being able to return the favor. This is the nature of the person he was. Leaving behind an admired career as an arts editor and literary journalist in Vienna, he was forced to flee the Nazis by traveling to France, where, while seeking refuge, he recorded his experiences --- never knowing if they would ever be read or if he would even survive. His memoir is ASYLUM.

"ASYLUM is an especially useful memoir because the author did not alter a single sentence from the time it was written during the war. As a matter of fact, there are no frills or injected opinion."

When finally fleeing his native country, there was a young man in a storm trooper uniform demanding to see his passport before the departure via train. When he conceded under threat, the man threw it back at his feet, designating him a “Jewish pig” before walking off --- and that was Scheyer’s last memory of being home in Austria, a place he could never call home again. At first he thought he had found safety. “Chez nous en France, tout cela serait impossible.” “Here in France none of that could ever happen,” was the saying he always heard. But soon the Nazi occupation arrived, and Paris closed its shutters amid a disparately flowery summer. “The enchanted peace was actually just fear taking a breath,” Scheyer observed. When the French people saw the Nazi troops goose-stepping down the streets, at first they laughed at its ridiculousness. If they only knew what was to come.

Surviving bombings that killed thousands of civilians, the desperation of an ordinarily six-hour train ride that lasted 36, and time in a concentration camp, Scheyer eventually found refuge in a convent where he sheltered among nuns who cared for women with intellectual disabilities. More than the horrors of persecution, what you will take away from ASYLUM is the compassion of strangers and the help of people who had the wherewithal to affect lives during the startling dysfunction of Europe under siege. And if you care to know what it was like for a good man to survive under the swastika, then this book is for you.

ASYLUM is an especially useful memoir because the author did not alter a single sentence from the time it was written during the war. As a matter of fact, there are no frills or injected opinion. Although this bright man had the capability of writing an ornate account, he chose to speak directly and acutely. Above all, he wants the reader to plainly understand the circumstances and his story. The memoir was left unpublished for years because of alleged anti-German sentiment, but after completing the book, I sincerely cannot place it. I hear words spoken during wartime from a persecuted man who was cut off from the outside world against his will, and at most hear tense moments of frustration thrust upon him --- not the slightest hatred.

Moriz Scheyer was an honest man leading a fruitful life who could not have imagined what was in store for him and his family due to the rise of Hitler, but now others can conceive what it was like to walk in his footsteps and into his character. As Scheyer wanted the world to question like he did, it has been stated, “How could it all have happened?”

Reviewed by John Bentlyewski on September 30, 2016

Asylum: A Survivor's Flight from Nazi-Occupied Vienna Through Wartime France
by Moriz Scheyer

  • Publication Date: April 18, 2017
  • Genres: History, Memoir, Nonfiction
  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Back Bay Books
  • ISBN-10: 0316272892
  • ISBN-13: 9780316272896