Saving Freud

The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom

By: Andrew Nagorski

Narrated by: Michael David Axtell

A dramatic true story about Sigmund Freud’s last-minute escape to London following the German annexation of Austria and the group of friends who made it possible.

In March 1938, German soldiers crossed the border into Austria and Hitler absorbed the country into the Third Reich. Anticipating these events, many Jews had fled Austria, but the most famous Austrian Jew remained in Vienna, where he had lived since early childhood. Sigmund Freud was eighty-one years old, ill with cancer, and still unconvinced that his life was in danger.

But several prominent people close to Freud thought otherwise, and they began a coordinated effort to persuade Freud to leave his beloved Vienna and emigrate to England. The group included a Welsh physician, Napoleon’s great-grandniece, an American ambassador, Freud’s devoted youngest daughter Anna and his personal doctor.

Saving Freud is the story of how this remarkable collection of people finally succeeded in coaxing Freud, a man who seemingly knew the human mind better than anyone else, to emerge from his deep state of denial about the looming catastrophe, allowing them to extricate him and his family from Austria so that they could settle in London. There Freud would live out the remaining sixteen months of his life in freedom.

It is “an insight-filled group portrait of the founder of psychoanalysis and his followers…Compelling reading” (The Wall Street Journal).

Critic reviews

"Gifted with a dramatic voice and, equally important, dramatic instinct, Michael David Axtell demonstrates his ability to sustain, balance, and shape a narrative that has a wide reach and many branches. Freud, paradoxically, recognized that savagery is wedded to mankind’s nature but discounted the danger he himself was in as the Nazis took over Vienna. His actual rescue proves relatively uneventful and occupies a small part of this narrative. The rest is a history of psychotherapy and biographies of the many people who contributed to saving Freud, all of interest, all pertinent. Axtell’s steady tone bridges the narrative’s leaps in time and focus while centering on the stately, dying Freud — whose mystique is still powerful today."

Weill read and well written

A very simple and didactic book. It shows clearly how things happened when Hitler came to power. Freud couldn't believe and certainly would be killed by the nazis if Marie Bonaparte wouldn't saved him and his family. Probably the age, the sickness and everything else depressed him to much to save himself.

Interesting, but not quite what I expected

This book is interesting, but I expected more about the rescue itself, though perhaps that would not be enough to make up a book. It is primarily a biography of Sigmund Freud (a lot I knew, but I learned some, too) and then shorter biographies of the people he had relationships with - daughter, colleagues, his physician, etc. who were vital in his relocation to England to escape Nazi persecution. Freud comes across in this book as a man who was not only brilliant, but with integrity, wit, and kindness. The narration is adequate, but nothing more.

Interesting...but not a Rescue Story

Interesting account of Freud's life, but this is not a typical WWII rescue story. Definitely recommend for someone in the field of Psychology or an aspiring student.