Dear Dr Janzow: Australia's Lutheran Churches and Refugees from Hitler's Germany
By Peter Monteath

Year of publication: 2005
ISBN: 0975831305

RRP: $AUS 30.00

On 18 November 1938 a short but extraordinary report appeared in the Times of London. It claimed that a certain Dr Janzow, President of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Australia, was offering a haven in Australia to refugees from Hitler's Germany. Appearing as it did just days after the notorious Night of Broken Glass, the offer appeared to throw a timely, yet almost incredible, life-line to Europe's despairing Jews and others.

This book is about those who schemed to rescue refugees from Hitler, and those who wrote in desperate hope to Dr Janzow. It reproduces many of the letters, extraordinarily moving documents of those bleak times, and it goes in search of the fate of those who wrote them.

Peter Monteath is Associate Professor of History at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.