Yearning to Breathe

The Nazis had relentlessly persecuted German and Austrian Jews, reducing their rights, expropriating their property, choking off their livelihoods, declaring them parasites, not citizens and on the evening of November 9, 1938 Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, Hitler unleashed Nazi mobs on Jews in cities and towns all over the newly expanded Germany, beating, burning, raping, killing, hoping to drive them all out of their country. Hundreds of thousands of German and Austrian Jews were now desperate to escape the Nazis. They knew their only hope lay in flight into friendly European countries or across the ocean to the United States.
As WWII begins, Americans are divided over whether to intervene against Germany. Some individuals and organizations work tirelessly to help refugees escape. Germany invades the USSR and secretly begins the mass murder of European Jews.