It is his only youth novel, published in 1940 in Yiddish by a New York publisher. Now "Emil and Karl" is being released for the first time in German. With Yankev Glatshteyn, one of the great Yiddish writers can be discovered. Vienna 1938: The two nine-year-old friends Emil and Karl suddenly find themselves alone in Nazi-occupied Austria. Their parents were arrested before their eyes: some because of their socialist beliefs, others because of their Jewish faith. The two boys, stripped of all their securities, experience the unimaginable, but also receive support from people who risk their lives for them. Families are destroyed, people are beaten, arrested, and murdered: What is it like for children to live in such a place? Through the eyes of children who cannot grasp the horror around them, Yankev Glatshteyn has created one of the first works of its kind.