Summons to Berlin, Joanne Intrator
Summons to Berlin, Joanne Intrator
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Summons to Berlin
Nazi Theft and A Daughter's Quest for Justice

Author: Joanne Intrator

Narrator: Suzanne Toren

Unabridged: 9 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/01/2023


Synopsis

On his deathbed, Dr. Joanne Intrator's father poses two unsettling questions:

"Are you tough enough? Do they know who you are?"

Joanne soon realizes that these haunting questions relate to a center-city Berlin building at 16 Wallstrasse that the Nazis ripped away from her family in 1938. But a decade is to pass before she will fully come to grasp why her father threw down the gauntlet as he did.

Repeatedly, Joanne's restitution quest brings her into confrontation with yet another of her profound fears surrounding Germany and the Holocaust. Having to call on reserves of strength she's unsure she possesses, the author leans into her professional command of psychiatry, often overcoming flabbergasting obstacles perniciously dumped in her path.

The depth and lucidity of psychological insight threaded throughout Summons to Berlin makes it an attention-grabbing standout among books on like topics. As a listener, you'll come away delighted to know just who Dr. Joanne Intrator is. You'll also finish the book cheering for her, because in the end, she proves far more than tough enough to satisfy her father's unnerving final demands.

About Joanne Intrator

Joanne Intrator's life has been shaped by being the daughter of German Jewish refugees. From childhood, she pondered why people perpetrate atrocities on their fellow human beings. After studying German history at Connecticut College, she received an MD from Columbia University and became a psychiatrist with an expertise in abnormal behavior. She spearheaded the first brain imaging research on well-characterized psychopaths, which was published in the Journal of Biological Psychiatry. Following her father's death in 1993, she took it upon herself to fight for restitution of a building in Berlin; her professional insights into the behavior of bureaucrats were critical to her understanding of how to negotiate with obstructionists. Her journey has been the subject of news articles, television interviews, and museum exhibits. Joanne practices psychiatry in New York City and writes a blog on psychopathy for Psychology Today.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jessica

I've read a lot of WWII memoirs and historical fiction, but I was still very much lacking in the perspective this memoir recounts. The author tells the story of how her Jewish father lost his career in the law as Hitler rose to power in Germany. He escaped and immigrated to the United States, only t......more

Goodreads review by Joseph

Triumph over Tragedy "Summons to Berlin" is a tragic family saga that starts decades before the war and ends decades after with a restitution case. At the center of the lawsuit is a business property once owned by the author’s grandfather, Jakob, that, like others he owned, was stolen by the Nazis. Y......more

Goodreads review by Ellen

I was lucky to get an advance copy of this book and was riveted from start to finish. Intrator is not only a gifted writer, but also an insightful observer of human behavior. I admire her grit in getting to the bottom of the story and her attempts to right the wrongs done to her family. It is only t......more