The ques­tion of why the Jews — and oth­er peo­ple deemed unde­sir­able to the Nazis — did not leave Ger­many in the years pri­or to the Aus­tri­an Anschluss, when they were able to do so, is explored in Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler. It draws the read­er into the grim real­i­ty of remain­ing alive while seek­ing the means and meth­ods of escape, and try­ing to main­tain a sense of nor­mal­cy through­out.

Dur­ing the years lead­ing to World War II, Jews had pen­e­trat­ed the high­est lev­els of soci­ety. They par­tic­i­pat­ed in high rank­ing social cir­cles, which was very impor­tant to sta­tus-con­scious Ger­mans and Aus­tri­ans. When legal emi­gra­tion was no longer an option, avenues of escape became more crit­i­cal­ly urgent. The doc­u­ments need­ed and the dif­fi­cul­ty acquir­ing them often became a mat­ter of who you knew. The clerk in a visa office became more sought after than the wealthy per­son, although mon­ey cer­tain­ly smoothed the way.

Tru­di Kan­ter relates the emo­tion­al roller coast­er she was on in attempt­ing to get to Eng­land with her par­ents and the love of her life, Wal­ter. The read­er shares their ter­ror and resul­tant cycles of iner­tia, hope and final­ly gal­va­niza­tion of emo­tion­al resources that Ms. Kan­ter, her fam­i­ly and friends all brought to bear.

As the vio­lence increased and coun­tries closed their bor­ders, the dri­ve to escape inten­si­fied. The author helps us to under­stand the com­plex real­i­ty of a Jew­’s exis­tence under these con­di­tions.

The char­ac­ters in the book are based on peo­ple in the author’s life; the events are as she remem­bered them. Ms. Kan­ter does not ignore the acts of kind­ness exhib­it­ed by the good peo­ple whose sur­rep­ti­tious help made the dif­fer­ence between life and death for many poten­tial vic­tims of the Nazi regime.