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List Price: $15.95 | | Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco
Salesrank: 418358
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| Our Price: $11.90 |
| Used Price: $0.54 |
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| Media: Paperback |
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Editorial Review:
Acclaimed in the Progressive's "Best Reading of 1993," these thrilling and harrowing firsthand stories of survivors and their rescuers vividly reveal the secret history of the Jews who found asylum from Hitler's Final Solution under Franco's Fascist regime.
The Mezuzah in the Madonna's Foot: Marranos and Other Secret Jews--A Woman Discovers Her Spiritual Heritage Reviews:
Not as interesting as we hoped. 
2009-12-10 - This was recommended for our book club to read. The majority of members were disappointed as it is very narrow in scope and repetitive. The first portion appears to be the author's attempt to heal herself psychologically (less a discovery of spiritual heritage than of her "self"); the second is mostly biographies of people who had experiences similar to hers. So after the first few, our members pointed out, it was just the same story with different names.
I had hoped for more history, since the subtitle is "Marranos and other Secret Jews," but there was none of that. Really, it should have been "Crypto-Jews of the Holocaust in Spain," if you want accuracy. She never really explained what "The Mezuzzah in the Madonna's Foot" means; we had to interpret. The book is well-written, but could have done better with some more aggressive editing, a different perspective, and a more accurate title (at least, one that relates more directly to the contents, instead of appearing to belong to a different book on the same topic). There are other books on the history of crypto-Jews or Conversos that people can read if they are really interested in the history, instead of just a bunch of Holocaust-era biographies.
Uniquely memorable. Should be back in print. 
2009-02-13 - I went to a public reading by the author when this book was first published (1984 or 85) and bought the book because when I hear a good reading and discussion of a book, I figure the least I can do to repay the author and the bookstore for the "free" entertainment is to buy the book, often not much more than a movie ticket. So I bought the book.
When I started reading it, I found myself astonished to be unable to put it down. I finished it in just a couple of days.
After that, everytime I had a friend announce an upcoming trip to Spain I would give her or him a copy of this book. I could never bear to "loan" my copy for fear of never getting it back. I had never been interested in visiting Spain myself but after reading this book a trip to Spain became a high priority ambition.
I won't say anything about the contents because other reviewers have done that so well and in such depth. But I will say that although I probably read two hundred books a year, I have never forgotten this book and many of its details. And now that many of people are getting their genetic histories "done" and discovering unknown Jewish histories for themselves, this book has gained new value on top of that already discussed.
If you have a chance, a happy chance, to find a copy of this book, read it. You won't regret it.
A riveting story of a little-known part of Holocaut history 
2004-12-01 - Alexy was a child in Prague, in 1939. When World War II broke out, her father suddenly announced that the family was leaving, and that they would be baptized as Catholics. Up to that point, the author had not even known that her family was Jewish. From Prague, they fled to France, and then to Spain.
Years later, after she was living in America, she learned that many Jews had fled to Spain during the Holocaust, but that most had not converted or hidden their Jewishness.
As she began to trace her roots, she discovered the irony of Jews seeking protection in a country that, centuries before, and persecuted and expelled them.
There are a couple of books here, fighting for supremacy!
The first book is about how and why Spain opened its borders to Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.
"The irrefutable fact remains that, although the presence of Jews placed the whole country at risk of being drawn into another ar or occupied by Hitler's forces, Fascist Spain, both officially and unofficially, accepted thousands of foreign Ashkenazic Jews within its borders and allowed them to remain until they were able to secure residence elsewhere."
Why? The question is probably unanswerable, though Alexy tries her best. Guilt over the expulsions of 1492? Maybe, but this does not account for the welcome to Ashkenazic, as well as Sephardic, Jews. Maybe Franco had Jewish ancestors? There's no proof of that. A political decision in case the Allies won? Perhaps, but in a country devastated economically by the Civil War, Spain gave much. One interesting suggestion is that because of the expulsion, and the concomitant absence of a Jewish population, Spain did not develop the kind of anti-Semitic attitudes seen in other European countries.
Whatever the reason, the fact remains that thousands owe their lives to an official blind eye, and open Spanish arms.
Alexy begins by explaining her quest, her need to understand her own family history that sent her to Spain, and to the New York archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee ("the Joint"), the organization that was responsible for helping stateless Jewish refugees in Spain. She interviews several people who found, or whose parents found, a haven across the Pyrenees, and in the section called "The Rescuers" she writes of those, Jews and non-Jews, who provided the means to safety. People such as Lisa Fittko, who acted as a guide, and Renée Reichmann, who from Tangier arranged material support, and Spanish diplomats who told the Gestapo, "these are our Jews" and taught the children a few words of Spanish in case they should be challenged.
The next two parts seemed to me as though they should be in a different book. "The Reformers" writes of present-day liberalization of Spanish laws and attitudes about non-Catholics (not merely Jews). It's interesting but although it touches on some theories as to why Spain helped, it is really more focused on the present and seems out of place.
The same is true of the final section, about contemporary Marranos and other "secret Jews". This is a huge topic about which a whole book could, and should (and probably has, I'll have to look) be written. In fact, the subtitle of this book suggests that that's what it's about. But it isn't.
Either this book should have been much longer, and made into a history of Spain and the Jews (and that would be a seriously long book!), or it should have been shorter, and the last two parts saved to become another book or books.
But those are quibbles. This is a fascinating, and very personal, discussion of an unexpected and little-known part of the Holocaust.
A valuable addition to Holocaust literature about rescue
2004-09-07 - Highly-readable account of Spain's indirect role during the Holocaust as many Jews sought escape to the West through Spain. There are interesting portraits of both the rescued and rescuers, with additional chapters on modern Spanish Jews and Marranos or Crypto-Jews of Spanish descent. Alexy did a great service bringing these stories to our attention as very few have thought of Jews in Spain beyond the Inquisition.
Interviews if you will.
2002-05-27 - This is a good book, all the stories gathered and told really paint the picture of what people went through trying to escape the Holocust, and how Spain really did help them.
