Emil Oprecht

At a time when everyone felt threatened, the publisher Emil Oprecht (1895-1952) embodied the radiating confidence that power must not be left to the great dictators. He was filled with the will to help, which he also awakened in others. Oprecht and his wife Emmie not only hosted countless refugees at their home and procured visas and passports for many of them. As a result, the Oprechts' publishing house and home became a place of refuge for persecuted artists and intellectuals from all over Europe during the National Socialist era.
In 1925 Oprecht founded his bookshop in Zurich and in 1933 the famous Europa-Verlag. Among the more than one hundred renowned exiled authors were Else Lasker-Schüler, Heinrich Mann and Golo Mann, Ernst Bloch, Ignazio Silona and Max Horkheimer. Oprecht often had to defend their works against pressure from abroad and against domestic censorship.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill personally thanked Oprecht for his commitment.