Kathryn Schaeffer Pabst

Taken: a Lament for a Lost Ethnicity Kathryn Schaeffer Pabst

The Donauschwaben, a mostly unknown ethnic group of Germans, migrated to Yugoslavia in the late 1700s. Endless boundary conflicts varyingly defined their land as Hungary, Yugoslavia, or Serbia. During World War II their ethnicity unfairly marked them as Nazi sympathizers despite their noncombatant status. They found themselves on the wrong side of every border as a wave of anti-German resentment legitimized their persecution and eradication.

TAKEN: A Lament for a Lost Ethnicity relates the intimate memoirs of Joseph Schaeffer, an ethnic Donauschwaben. Joseph?s childhood is stolen the day the Russians march into town. He is captured and taken from his land and family to a slave labor camp of endless suffering and years of imprisonment. Hope is restored after a courageous escape and eventual immigration to the United States. This enduring tale of survival eventually reunites the Schaeffer family and life begins anew.

?TAKEN is a testament to one man?s tenacity and courage and an affirmation of hope and life in a world full of despair and death. The plight of refugees in post-war central Europe is an important, yet neglected story. Joseph Schaeffer?s life and memories bring poignancy and immediacy to that story. Kathryn Schaeffer Pabst ably crafts the memoir and deserves our appreciation for bringing her father?s story of survival to us.??Eugene Edward Beiriger, Ph. D., Associate Professor of History, DePaul University