Asylum: a survivor's flight from Nazi-occupied Vienna through wartime France

In1943, hidden by the Resistance in a French convent, Moriz Scheyer began drafting an account of his wartime experiences: a story of flight and persecution in Austria and France.
As arts editor of Vienna's principal newspaper before the German annexation of Austria, Scheyer had known the city's great artists, and was himself an important literary journalist. In this book he brings his distinctive critical and emotional voice to bear on his own extraordinary experiences: Vienna at the Anschluss; Paris immediately pre-war and under Nazi occupation; the 'Exodus'; two periods of incarceration in French concentration camps; contact with the Resistance; a failed attempt at escape to Switzerland; and a dramatic rescue followed by clandestine life in a mental asylum run by Franciscan nuns.