Going Home (1938)

"And Now I Was on My Way Back to Palestine--I Was Going Home...":
First Edition in English of Ernest Hawthern's Going Home, 1938

Harthern, Ernest. Going Home. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938.

Octavo. Hardcover. 1st Edition.

First American edition of this autobiographical travel narrative of a German-Jewish man traveling to Palestine at the beginning of Nazi persecution. Dedicated to Harthern's friend, the author Thomas Mann, Going Home deals with Harthern's three-month trip to Palestine during the period of the League of Nations mandate. Already feeling the terrible sting of the Nuremberg Laws, Harthern was anxious to get his son safely settled as an immigrant to Palestine. Harthern struggled deeply with the concept of aliyah and ultimately returned to Germany briefly before emigrating to Scandinavia: first Denmark until the occupation and then finally Sweden. Germany barred him from the country in 1936. The book was widely acclaimed in literary circles and remains an important early document of World War II exodus. Book about-fine, dust jacket with light wear to extremities. A near-fine copy.