Passing Through Havana

For some Europeans fleeing the gathering Holocaust on the Continent, the bright wash of Cuba's azure skies and sparkling sands offered a last refuge. For Suze, a strong, seductive woman who saved her family from Hitler's Jewish witch-hunt with her Magda Lupescu-an appeal and wile, Havana meant life and freedom after their determined, often desperate, flight across Europe and the Atlantic. But for Claudia, Suze's blond, blue-eyed adolescent daughter, the Latin tempo and allure of upper-class Catholic society are too tempting and draw her away from her parents and their expatriate community and into the friendships and parties of Cuba's pre-Castro gilded set. Her Aryan features and skill at "e;passing"e; allow her to recast her identity for the circumstance, and each time deny her own feeling of rootlessness. One evening, at a party at the Havana Yacht Club, she falls in love with a young German, who does not know she is Jewish, and Claudia is caught up in a taboo relationship both frightening and erotic. Claudia's story explores another side of the Holocaust: about Jews who escaped to exotic places only to rediscover their heritage of homelessness; and about both the psychology of self-hate and the inner strength of individuals who survive. Novelist and screenwriter Edmundo Desnoes sums it up this way: "e;Is love or is history the answer? If you read Passing Through Havana you will discover the price of both."e;