Farewell, Aleppo

My Father, My People, and Their Long Journey Home

By: Claudette E. Sutton

Narrated by: Claudette E. Sutton

Length: 3 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

The Jews of Aleppo, Syria, had been part of the city's fabric for more than two thousand years, in good times and bad, through conquerors and kings. But in the middle years of the twentieth century, all that changed. To Selim Sutton, a merchant with centuries of roots in the Syrian soil, the dangers of rising anti-Semitism made clear that his family must find a new home. With several young children and no prospect of securing visas to the United States, he devised a savvy plan for getting his family out: "exporting" his sons. In January, he sent two oldest, Meir and Saleh, just 19 and 17 years old, to Shanghai to work in an uncle's export business, with hopes that China would provide a steppingstone to America. All this changed in December 1941 when Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor and seized Shanghai the next day. From then until the end of the war, Mike endured Japanese occupation in Shanghai alone, across the world from his family, with only his mettle to rely on as he strived to survive personally and economically in the face of increasing deprivation. Told with a journalist's eye and a daughter's love, Farewell, Aleppo is the poignant story, written and narrated by Mike's daughter, of the journey that would ultimately take him from the insular Jewish community of Aleppo to the solitary task of building a new life in America.

©2014 Terra Nova Books (P)2017 Claudette E. Sutton