One Step Ahead A Jewish Fugitive in Hitler's Europe Alfred Feldman Foreword by Susan Zuccotti   November 2001 320 pages | 22 b&w photos | 5 maps | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 ISBN 0-8093-2411-3, $24.95t cloth Holocaust Studies / World History Also of interest Ben’s Story: Holocaust Letters with Selections from the Dutch Underground Press     “Feldman’s memoir is quite successful.  His is not the conventional retelling of the brutalities of life and death in Nazi camps.  Rather it is the story of a Jew from Germany who managed to elude the Nazis for the entire war.  How he did so is a fascinating tale of personal ingenuity, sheer good luck, and the caring protection of others, spread across four European countries.” —Jerold S. Auerbach, author of Jacob’s Voices: Reflections of a Wandering American Jew   Through personal accounts, surviving family correspondence, and twenty-seven illustrations, One Step Ahead: A Jewish Fugitive in Hitler’s Europe provides the kind of details no holocaust survivor can ever forget as Alfred Feldman recalls his daily life and flight into exile.  Feldman shares devastating memories with all the horror and hope of the man who lived to tell his story. His memoir conveys the searing pain that has never left him, while demonstrating the subtle humor and triumphant humanity of a survivor.              Feldman vividly describes the impact of the escalating anti-Semitic hatred and violence in Germany during the 1930s, the impact of the notorious Nuremberg Laws in 1935, and the terrifying Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938. By age sixteen, Feldman was living with his parents and three younger sisters in Antwerp, Belgium, during the 1939 German invasions of Poland, marking the start of World War II. In the face of increasing persecution, Feldman’s extended family scattered over the globe in a desperate attempt to remain one step ahead of their Nazi pursuers.              Recalling his life on the run, Feldman describes what few survivors have chosen to write about: the Vichy raids of August 26, 1942; the French labor brigades; the Comité Dubouchage; and life in supervised residence in France under the Italians. While in the south of France, Feldman endured food shortages and Nazi anti-Semitic measures, beginning with work camps and culminating in the deportation and ultimate death of his mother and sisters at Auschwitz.              To evade the Germans, Feldman and his father fled into the Italian Alps in September of 1943, hiding between the Allies and the Germans. Aided by local villagers, the Feldmans survived precariously for over a year and a half, along with other Jewish refugees, until that region was liberated. Only then, and only gradually, did Feldman manage to piece together the fate of his surviving family and learn at last of the death of his mother and sisters.               Now, as an adult, Alfred Feldman has retraced his escape and exile, taking his wife and children to his hometown in Germany, the mountains in Italy, and Montagnac, where a plaque commemorates his mother and sisters.                  Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1923, Alfred Feldman is a retired chemist and computer systems consultant.