"War Diary", Memoir by the Jewish Refugee Heinz Wisla – Jerusalem, 1944

"War Diary", Memoir by the Jewish Refugee Heinz Wisla – Jerusalem, 1944
Krieges Tagebuch eines jungen Emigranten [War Diary of a Young Emigrant], by Heinz Wisla. Typewritten. Jerusalem, 1944. German.
Memoir by Heinz Wisla (1920-2004), a Berlin-born Jew, recounting the story of his escape from Nazi Germany and his arduous journey to Palestine. Typewritten, with a handwritten title page, signed by Wisla (noted on title page: "Berlin 1940"). Corrections in pen and pencil on many leaves. Enclosed with the book are three pictures of the author, two taped to title page and on back endpaper. Handwritten beneath the picture on the endpaper: "Jerusalem – 1944".
A Hebrew adaptation of the book, "Ba-derekh le-Erets-Yisra'el", was published in 1945 by "Am Oved", under the pseudonym Ben-Zvi Kalischer (translated from a German manuscript by Shalom Kremer).
According to the memoir, Wisla escaped Nazi Germany in the beginning of the war, after a period of imprisonment in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. His long journey to Palestine, passing through many countries – Slovakia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Portugal and elsewhere, was laden with adventures. Among other things, Wisla describes swimming to escape the gunshots of Romanian border guards, drifting to a lonely island in the Aegean Sea, and meeting with Pope Pius XII in the Vatican. In February 1944, Wisla reached Palestine on board the illegal immigrant ship Nyassa.
The description of the meeting between Wisla and the Pope is one of the most astounding passages in the diary. Wisla writes that upon reaching Rome from the Italian detention camp in Rhodes, he was able to arrange an audience with the Pope, alongside several German-Catholic paratroopers, who were on their way to the North-African front. During this audience, Wisla requested the Pope's aid in improving the situation of Jewish refugees. The Pope promised to do whatever he could and even announced to Wisla, the German soldiers still within earshot: "My friend, you are a Jew and must be proud […] always be proud of being a Jew!". This story was published in April 1944 in the Jerusalem Post (anonymously). Some used this story to disprove the claims that Pope Pius XII adopted a policy of non-involvement during the destruction of European Jewry.
The credibility of this memoir is questionable (though presumably Wisla indeed escape from Germany, some of the details in his memoir are imprecise or unverifiable).
[135] leaves, 27.5 cm. Good-fair condition. Stains. Wear and small tears to margins (not affecting text). Fold lines and creases. One leaf cut in its lower part (one third of leaf is missing). Worn, loose card binding.