This Labyrinth of Darkness and Light Henrietta Szold, the Rescue of Children from Hitler's Europe and her Palestine Experience

Drawing on Henrietta Szold’s letters and diary, extensive research, and historical sources of that time in Germany and Palestine, the book is a powerful narrative and spellbinding rescue story that brings to life one of the darkest and yet most inspirational chapters in Jewish history. Szold was seventy-three, founder of Hadassah, the Jewish Zionist women’s organization, when she was appointed to direct Youth Aliyah, and over the next decade transported over 20,000 Jewish children from Nazi Europe to the safety of Palestine, a feat that she later considered the greatest triumph of her memorable career. David Ben-Gurion called Szold ‘the greatest Jewish woman in 400 years.’ Labyrinth is the unforgettable story of Szold’s stamina and courage as she battled her greatest adversary, mass murderer Adolf Eichmann, for the lives of innocent children. Not only Szold, who made three perilous trips to Berlin during the 1930s under the watchful eye of the Gestapo, but also Hadassah operatives and members of Youth Aliyah stationed throughout Europe, who lived under constant danger, and many of whom gave their lives for the rescue mission. Szold would live in Palestine until her death in 1945.

Randy Grigsby is the author of A Train Palestine: The Tehran Children, Anders’ Army and their Escape from Stalin’s Siberia, 1939-1943. On a trip to Israel in 2014, he first learned of the Tehran Children and of Henrietta Szold. He lives in Shreveport, Louisiana with his wife, Joyce. This Labyrinth of Darkness and Light is his second nonfiction book.