Berlin – Shanghai – New York

Translated and Edited by Frederick Rolf

This is a vivid and factual account by an eminent Berlin physician of his family’s escape from the clutches of Hitler’s regime.

The comfortable life of a successful and much loved doctor is destroyed when the Nazi government cancels all Jewish doctors’ licenses to practice medicine. He has no choice but to emigrate.

Dr. Friedrichs then relates in graphic detail how he overcomes the bureaucratic nightmare that the Nazis had created to frustrate all Jews’ attempts to escape. He succeeds in bringing his family out, but then suffers eight years of deprivation and illness in Shanghai. There he saves the lives of many refugees by learning to treat unfamiliar tropical diseases, at the same time battling the notorious self-styled “King of the Jews”, the Japanese overseer of Hongkew, Mr. Ghoya.

Dr. Friedrichs describes these years of exile from his homeland with remarkable insight, maintaining a keen sense of humor even under desperate conditions. After the war he emigrates to America, where he rebuilds his life, practicing in New York for another twenty years.

It is a heart-rending report, both personal and historical, full of detailed observations – unlike any other document left to us by those fortunate enough to have escaped Hitler.