The incredible true account of a young Jewish student who, in a desperate gambit to escape the Nazis, went underground in his hometown of Berlin, posing as an Aryan with another young escapee—a harrowing ordeal that he would miraculously escape not only with his life, but also with a love that would last a lifetime.
In 1933, the year that Hitler seized power in Germany, Ernest Fontheim was a bookish and playful 11-year-old, leading a charmed existence in Berlin with his assimilated upper-class Jewish family. In less than a decade, the Fontheims’ fortunes irrevocably changed: By 1941, Ernest’s father had been stripped of his law license, their luxurious apartment had been usurped by a Nazi official, and Ernest, now 19, had been forced into labor at the Siemens munitions factory. First his girlfriend, then his best friend, and then his entire immediate family were “deported to the East,” sent to fates unknown.
Finally, in desperation, Ernest approached his friend at Siemens, the charming Margot Hass, with a plan: along with her parents, they would go underground, posing as an Aryan family in order to avoid the roundups. Ernest and the Hasses soon joined the ranks of the roughly 6,500 Berlin Jews who went into hiding after deportations to the camps began. Most of the invisibles were caught within the first few weeks or months. But incredibly, this little group—joined by fate and by choice—would survive not only the terror of the war but also the chaos of its aftermath, when Ernest found himself facing death on numerous occasions at the hands of their Soviet liberators.
An instant classic, The Boy Who Vanished is the stunning tale of a young man’s struggle to hold onto his humanity in a country gone mad—and his unlikely triumph over the forces of darkness.
Jordan Fontheim, Ernest’s grandson, is a senior consultant in the healthcare industry and an active member of the Jewish community of Washington, DC — where he was born and raised. Deeply involved in Jewish culture throughout his life, he grew up hearing his family’s survival story and joined the project to carry his grandfather’s legacy into print for the next generation. A book more than 80 years in the making, Jordan spent over four years carefully and lovingly editing the text for publication. He is a graduate of the Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School (fka JPDS; Washington, DC) and the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School (Rockville, MD),. He holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Rochester, where he was member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) Jewish fraternity, and both an M.B.A. and an M.H.A. from Tulane University. He currently resides in Washington, DC with his wife.
Fontheim will be in conversation with David Litt,a New York Times bestselling author of "Thanks, Obama," "Democracy in One Book or Less," and "It's Only Drowning," as a well as a semi-finalist for the James Thurber Prize for American Humor. A former senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, he was described as “the comic muse for the president” for his work on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. His freelance work also appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, TIME, and The Guardian, among others, and he served as a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. He has appeared frequently on CNN and MSNOW, very occasionally on Fox, and has exactly once on Newsmax.