Photographer Herbert Sonnenfeld (1906 – 1972) was able to escape from his native Germany in the winter of 1939, shortly after the Second World war had just begun. After the initiation of the Nuremburg Laws four years earlier, life for him and his fellow Jews had taken a terrible turn for the worse and he was delighted to be able to depart for New York. The attached photo-essay and their accompanying captions reveal his joy and elation for living in a land of plenty. His images of the American scene are the sort of stuff that Americans take for granted and only one of Hitler’s castaways could hold dear: smiling policemen, laughing children, full grocery stores; having documented these placid images, Sonnenfeld asks: “America, are you conscious of your blessings?”
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More about the American home front can be read here
