In The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World, author Kati Marton tells the story of Hungarian Jewish immigrants and their astonishing success and influence in the West, especially in the United States.

The New Yorker attests that, "By looking at these nine lives - salvaged, and crucial -Marton provides a moving measure of how much was lost." Among the men the book follows are: Robert Capa, the first photographer to go ashore on Dday ; landscape photographer André Kertesz, whose work has been shown at the MoMA; Arthur Koestler, author of the anticommunist novel Darkness at Noon; Michael Curtiz, the director of Casablanca; film producer Alexander Korda, responsible for The Third Man; physicists Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, and Eugene Wigner, who were instrumental in developing nuclear power; and computer scientist John von Neumann.

What these accomplished expatriates had in common was that, according to Marton, they were "double outsiders," from a "small linguistically impenetrable, landlocked country, also Jews." They had to leave their beloved Budapest and café society in order to make their marks on the world, which infused them with lifelong feelings of loneliness. But as Marton writes in the introduction to The Great Escape, it also makes their achievements that much more extraordinary because, "as they crossed borders and oceans in search of safety, they carried with them only their genius and ideas."

Kati Marton, an awardwinning former NPR and ABC correspondent, is the author of Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History, a New York Times bestseller, as well as Wallenberg, The Polk Conspiracy, A Death in Jerusalem, and a novel, An American Woman.

Richard Holbrooke was nominated by President Clinton to be Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs. Prior to becoming Assistant Secretary of State, he was US Ambassador to Germany. Holbrooke has had a varied career as a professional diplomat, a magazine editor, an author, a Peace Corps director, and an investment banker.

Tickets to this event are $10 adults, $5 students/seniors, and free for members. -- www.mjhnyc.org