When the World Closed Its Doors

[A] memoir of one couple's escape from the Nazis ...[full of] ingenuity and determination "[A] memoir of one couple's escape from the Nazis ...[full of] ingenuity and determination." Michael R. Marrus, Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Toronto At the beginning of World War II, the US and other countries erected a "paper wall"-- a bureaucratic maze that prevented all but a small number of Jewish refugees from emigrating from Nazi-Occupied Europe.When the World Closed Its Doors tells the true story of a young couple who, like many European Jews, were caught between the Nazis and the "paper wall". Ida Piller-Greenspan was married in Belgium on May 9, 1940. That night the Nazis invaded Belgium. She and her new husband survived the next four months hitchhiking through occupied territory, hiding in barns and tunnels, dodging bombs near Dunkirk, crossing the Pyrenees on foot, and enduring weeks with little food and no money. Ultimately they arrived in Portugal, certain they would find sanctuary somewhere in the world beyond Europe's borders. But their trials were not over. It took nine anxious months for them to find a country that would let them in -- months spent watching in horror as most refugees were forced back to uncertain lives in their home countries. Forty years later, Ida, an accomplished artist, created a pictorial diary of their journey. Her prints -- lyrical, haunting, and compelling -- are accompanied by a page-turning narrative that bears witness to this treacherous and largely forgotten chapter of World War II history.

More people traveled internationally in 2019 than in any year in history. After COVID began its rapid spread throughout the world, though, international travel plummeted, and nations across the world hardened their borders. For the first time, governments took the same tools that have been used against less privileged migrants and asylum seekers and turned them on citizens from countries that had long enjoyed relatively unfettered travel—and sometimes on their own citizens. In When the World Closed Its Doors, Edward Alden and Laurie Trautman tell the story of how nearly every country in the world shut its borders and explain how this global shock to the system ended up transforming state border policies around the world. They detail the consequences of the COVID border restrictions and explain why governments used their harshest containment measures on those coming from outside. Throughout, Alden and Trautman focus on human stories to show the multiple impacts that states' increasing restrictiveness has had—economic, demographic, social, and political. A sweeping overview of the re-bordering of the world, both during and after 2020, this synthetic, wide-angle view of a singular shock to the international systems of travel and migration highlights why citizens need better protections and governments more robust guardrails.