Window Shop
The Window Shop
From its beginning in 1939, the Window Shop of Cambridge, Massachusetts, provided a safe harbor for hundreds of German and Austrian refugees who fled from Hitler to America. It was founded by concerned Cambridge residents who were guided only by their desire to help the refugees. Together they created a non-profit enterprise that was unparalleled in its success and influence. Through oral histories, the women of the Window Shop chronicle the history of a unique organization that remained a Cambridge institution for 33 years.
“By the time the Window Shop moved to 56 Brattle Street in 1947,
it had become a favorite haunt for the diverse community of European
intellectuals who fled to Cambridge, such as architect Walter Gropius.
The continental food and atmosphere provided a welcome link to their
past. ‘It makes people feel at home to find here in Cambridge
goodies they had . . . in their childhood,’ Alice Broch told the
Christian Science Monitor in 1955.”
—The Boston Globe, Jan. 4, 1995
| “I shall never be at a loss where to take one
of my grandchildren for a delightful meal if I find myself in Cambridge
. . . So many happy faces greeted me there--these women who had been in concentration camps or had spent long years waiting to find themselves able to begin life again in a new country, and now actually at work helping their husbands or their children to start again. You are glad you live in an America which can be a land of hope.” —Eleanor Roosevelt, My Day, May 30, 1950 |
 Eleanor Roosevelt meets three women from the Bakery. |