Synopsis
‘A truly major work, both deeply moving and incredibly powerful. It is a masterpiece of research, structure and writing . . . unforgettable’ Sir Antony Beevor, bestselling author of Stalingrad
In 1938, Vienna was the second largest Jewish city in Europe. By 1946, only a few thousand Jews remained. In this extraordinary story of loss, fear, longing and hope, acclaimed historian Douglas Smith chronicles the destruction of Jewish Vienna under the Nazis. Drawing on hundreds of long-forgotten sources, The City Without Jews centres on one remarkable person: Mignon Langnas.
A woman of exceptional strength, courage and dignity, Mignon’s story opens a window onto the larger history of Vienna in the Nazi years. The city was at the forefront of the Nazis’ anti-Semitic policies and became a laboratory for developing methods to eradicate the Jews – expropriation, forced emigration, exile and eventually mass deportation to the killing fields and deaths camps in the East.
Watching as nearly every Jew she knew disappeared, Mignon vividly recorded her world in diaries and letters, creating an indispensable and uniquely detailed account that is impossible to forget. In intimate and heart-rending prose, Douglas Smith tells a story like no other – of betrayal, sacrifice, impossible choices and survivor guilt.
Details
20 August 2026
9781529090864Reviews
This is a truly major work, both deeply moving and incredibly powerful. It is a masterpiece of research, structure and writing. Never before has anyone so brilliantly integrated the history of the Nazi onslaught on the Jews of Vienna – a more vicious explosion even than in Germany – with the intimate experience of their victims. It is an unforgettable story of greed, betrayal and hypocrisy, self-sacrifice, impossible moral choices and survivor guilt
