Vienna on Fire

ESCAPE FROM NAZI VIENNA IS GRETA KOLBE’S ONLY HOPE

March 12, 1938: German troops swarm into Austria, and 18-year-old Jewish Greta Kolbe's comfortable life, along with her parents and the city's other 250,000 Jews, sinks into a nightmare of intimidation and terror.

Faced with arrest for joining the Austrian resistance, Greta flees Nazi Vienna and embarks on a harrowing journey to the Netherlands for a ship bound for America. A spiteful ex-boyfriend-turned Nazi and the Gestapo are only a few steps behind her.

With grit, ingenuity, and the help of old and new friends, Greta smuggles diamonds to Berlin for the German resistance, fends off a lecherous Hermann Göring at a drug-fueled orgy, evades capture at a Nazi rally, and fights a Dutch bounty hunter during an ambush at the German-Dutch border.

When Greta's pursuers trap her on the gangplank minutes before her ship departs for New York City, she has one last chance to escape her enemies and certain death. 

Don Gabor is the author of How to Start a Conversation and Make Friends and other non-fiction books. VIENNA ON FIRE is based on his mother’s recollections and the stories of other men and women opposed to Hitler and the Third Reich.