THE GEM & CENTURY THEATRES
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NOVEMBER 17
THROUGH
DECEMBER 31
South Of
Between the Anschluss and Kristallnacht in
Bolivia was one of the few remaining places in
The Purple Rose Theatre Company Production of
7;c7;,t7;Nt'
In his new book, author Leo Spitzer explores
"Yoop it up for Escanaba,
a Gem of a comedy."
SUZANNE CHESSLER
-Michael H. Margolin,
Detroit News
Special to the Jewish News
L
"Some comedies have laughs
by the dozen. Escanaba has
them by the gross."
-Martin F. Kohn,
Detroit Free Press
A Hilarious Comedy
BY JEFF DANIELS
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JEWISH NEWS
eo Spitzer was born in
Bolivia to parents fleeing
Nazis in Austria, and he
stayed there until age 10,
when his family could enter the
United States. In the late '30s, as
countries increasingly closed their bor-
ders to refugees, Bolivia offered a safe
haven, and the influx of Jews eventual-
ly reached 20,000.
Although many Jews thought of the
South American country as a tempo-
rary stopover in their journey to a new
life, calling it "Hotel Bolivia," their
memories hold stories of self-realiza-
tion, connection and pleasures relayed
through Spitzer as author of Hotel
Bolivia (Hill and Wang; $25), a book
dedicated to that period and place in
history.
While highly personal, Spitzer's rec-
ollections are buttressed by methods
showing professional expertise. A pro-
fessor of history at Dartmouth
College, Spitzer videotaped remem-
brances of immigrants and combed
documentary materials found in
archives, repositories and libraries in
Bolivia, the United States, England,
Austria, Germany and Israel.
Spitzer, who has lectured at the
University of Michigan, talks about
his work and reads passages from his
book at 1 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11, at
the 48th annual Jewish Book Fair.
"My desire as a historian to write
about this experience has been with
me for a very long time," says Spitzer.
"Bolivia took more refugees in a short
period of time than Canada, Australia,
New Zealand and the British
Commonwealth countries combined.
Refugee reactions had to do with both
the physical environment and being in
the middle of a population that was
the least European of South American
nations."
In many ways, the author, whose
previous books include The Creoles of
Sierra Leone: Response to Colonialism,
1870-1945 and Lives In Between:
Assimilation and Marginality in
Austria, Brazil and West Africa, 1780-
1945, attributes Bolivia's open door to
Jews as a matter of luck.
In the early 1930s, Bolivia had
gone through a devastating war with
Paraguay, and a significant part of the
male population was killed or lost.
After that war, there was a revolution
and younger officers took over. The
availability of European Jews was seen
as an opportunity to use established
skills to modernize the country.
"There had been relatively little
anti-Semitism in Bolivia [in part]
because there were so few Jews that
they had no idea about [the issue],"
Spitzer explains. "The country pro-
duced tin and other minerals impor-
tant to the war effort, and the
Germans wanted a foothold to tap its
resources.
"There were a lot of Nazi agents in
Bolivia trying to get influence with the
government, and the Germans used
the influx of refugees as a way to stir
up anti-Semitism and anti-Allied feel-
L