Eva Broessler Weissman and Gregory Moore
A recent autobiography entitled, “The War Came to Me: A Story of Endurance and Survival,” by Eva Broessler Weissman and Gregory Moore, published by the University Press of America (2009) is a testament to the many persons throughout Europe that risked their lives to save Jews from the extermination effort by the Nazis. This book tells the story of the courageous and compassionate Dutch citizens who helped two young Austrian sisters avoid deportation to the death camps where they almost certainly would have perished.
The sisters, Eva and Ruth, were sent by their parents to The Netherlands in order to escape the increasing persecution of Jews in their homeland. They would endure years of separation from their parents and each other, before the family was eventually reunited. Through the daring efforts of these Dutch families, Eva and Ruth were able to escape Nazi persecution and survive the war.
Holocaust survivor Eva Broessler Weissman escaped from Vienna, Austria, to the Netherlands in 1939. With the help of a family that removed her from danger, she avoided arrest and acted as a courier in the Dutch resistance until the end of the Nazi occupation. After World War II, she moved to the United States, where she devoted her life to working with nonprofit organizations. She and her sister, now Ruth Newmark, provided an enormous amount of reference material, including their unpublished memoirs and videotaped interview, to associate professor of history and political science at Notre Dame College, Gregory Moore, who wrote the six chapters of the book.
In 2005, as a former student at the High School Billrothstraße in the 19th district of Vienna until 1938, Weissman contacted the Austrian National Fund requesting assistance in finding former classmates. With the support of the Fund, as well as members of her former school, she was able to connect with some of them living as far away as Australia. Since that time she has visited Vienna and friends several times. In the recent publication issued in 2010 in commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, Eva Weissman was honored as one of the examples of successful reunions of families and friends.