TWO WHEELS TO FREEDOM

This surprisingly breezy tale of a young man’s flying under the Nazi radar in Berlin belies the peril facing Jews during the war.

Prolific author Magid fashions an incredible tale of derring-do in defiance of the murderous Nazis. Cioma Schönhaus (birth name Samson), the son of Russian-born Jewish immigrants who ran a mineral water business in Berlin, grew up in the left-wing Jewish quarter of Scheunenviertel. Having once moved to Palestine years earlier, the Schönhaus family was essentially stateless but determined to stay in Berlin. Amid the hostile rise of the Nazis, with the gradual, insidious erosion of rights for Jews in professional and private life, in 1939 Boris and Fanja enrolled their young son in the Jewish work camp Bielefeld, then in a Jewish art school. Events began to happen fast: Boris was jailed for selling butter on the black market; their apartment was bombed; and rumors began leaking out about what “going east” meant. Working at a tailor shop making uniforms for Germans, Cioma meets an intrepid friend, Det, who tells him, “As long as you look confident, you can’t go wrong.” Det's advice stays with him after his parents are taken in a transport. Cioma, exempt from transports because he now works in a rifle factory, gets jobs forging documents and eventually goes underground. With money, aliases, and a carefree demeanor that charms women—and time running out as others around him are betrayed and perishing—he buys a bike and decides to cycle to the Swiss border. His risky flight and ultimate triumph come late in the book, almost as an afterthought in this plucky young man’s arsenal of survival tricks.

An amazing story that would seem unlikely if it were not so well documented.