Most serious historians would estimate that at least 40 million people perished in the death camps and on the killing fields of World War Two. In the face of such a figure, it should cause no surprise that they received more attention than the millions who 'merely' lost their homes, were uprooted or ethnically cleansed.

John Tschinkel's autobiographical history deals with a small and relatively unknown group of such persons, the Gottschee Germans. For six hundred years this former enclave in Slovenia survived and even prospered under the generally benign sovereignty of Habsburg Austria....