The Spielberg Files

The Spielberg Files.This is the story of the escape of Steven Spielberg's ancestors from Russia to America; along with two million Jewish emigrants.On April 10, 2003, over 100,000 files went up in flames in a monastery in the town of Kamenets Podolsk in western Ukraine. These were the entire records of the Jewish community living there since the 15th century. Among these Jewish files were the records of the ancestors of Hollywood director, Steven Spielberg. This book traces the extraordinary untold story of the escape of his grandfather, Shimuel, during the Russian pogroms of 1905, which were instigated by 'The Black Hundred, ' a anti -Semitic secret society loyal to Tsar Nicholas II.A rescue operation was organised on an enormous scale by Jewish bankers in London, along with many other Jewish organisations. Their leader was Baron de Hirsch, who donated over £300,000,000 to this operation. It was one of the largest humanitarian rescues in human history.A biblical exodus of hundreds of ships, every year from ports, in Germany to America, was the main escape route; that was organised by Jewish man Albert Ballin. With vast funds at their disposal, organisations such as; Alliance Israélite Universelle, the Jewish Temporary Shelter and the Jewish Colonization Association, rescued, transported and resettled over two million Jewish emigrants to America; that were part of the Hasidic, Ashkenazi and Sephardic community.Those who did not escape became victims of Nazi death squads in the Ukraine in 1941, or fled eastwards to China, America and Israel. Some of these Jewish refugees were the Spielberg family. However, the Spielbergs that remained in Podolsk, were murdered, on the orders of the S.S. leader, Friedrick Jeckeln.The full breadth, context and scale of this story is now told for the first time. This book is the result of many years of research in archives in England, Germany, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine. The author travelled to these countries to rediscover the Jewish communities, and the lost archipelagos of villages and shtetls; in order to locate the synagogues, mass graves and archives that are the remnants of this lost Jewish homeland, known as the Pale of Settlement. It was a journey into the past to reconstruct what remains of this lost history, before it vanishes into the midst of time. This book uncovers the extraordinary story of the heroism, faith, love and hope, of a people on the edge of extinction, and the will to survive against all odds; and of those who assisted them in their quest, to find a new homeland.