In 1943, hidden by the Resistance in a French convent, Moriz Scheyer began drafting an account of his wartime experiences: a tense, moving, at times almost miraculous story of flight & persecution in Austria & France. As arts editor of Vienna`s principal newspaper before the German annexation of Austria, Scheyer had known the city`s great artists, including Stefan Zweig & Gustav Mahler, & was himself an important literary journalist. In this book he brings his distinctive critical & emotional voice to bear on his own extraordinary experiences: Vienna at the Anschluss; Paris immediately pre-war & under Nazi occupation; the ` Exodus`; two periods of incarceration in French concentration camps; contact with the Resistance; a failed attempt at escape to Switzerland; & a dramatic rescue followed by clandestine life in a mental asylum run by Franciscan nuns. Completed in 1945, Scheyer`s memoir is remarkable not just for the riveting events that it recounts, but as a near-unique survivor`s perspective from that time.