Frank Dabba Smith, a California-born rabbi currently living in England, recently released a history of the Leitz family, the German founders of Leica cameras. "The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train" is an account of the efforts of Ernst Leitz II, the family’s Protestant patriarch, to establish safe emigration routes for Jews to leave Germany in the guise of Leitz employees being assigned overseas.
Employees, retailers, family members and their friends were assigned to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and the United States, where executives found them jobs in the photographic industry. The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out of this migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople, marketers and writers for the photographic press.
The book is available from the American Photographic Historical Society, 1150 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036.