Erwin Walter Palm

Erwin Walter Palm (28 August 1910—7 July 1988) was a German Latin American scholar, historian, and writer.

Palm was born 28 August 1910 in Frankfurt/Main, in a house that was located near today's Suhrkamp house. He is the only survivor of the Holocaust from his family, his relatives having been murdered by the Nazi regime. Palm studied archaeology at the University of Heidleberg, where he met a fellow student who would become his wife, Hilde Löwenstein (later known as Hilde Palm, and since 1959 as Hilde Domin).

Particularly receptive to the malicious developments taking place in Nazi Germany, the couple fled to Italy in 1932 to escape the growing anti-Semitism. They married in 1936, and lived first in Florence and then in Rome. Because of the rapprochement between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Hitler’s visit to Rome, and the acrimonious atmosphere of fascist Italy, the pair once again emigrated in 1939, this time to England.

However, their fears of the Nazi menace did not wane, and the couple tried frenetically to emigrate across the Atlantic. None of their preferred choices—the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil—granted them a visa, while some charged them exorbitant sums of money which they didn't have. The only country to unconditionally welcome them was the Dominican Republic. There, they arrived in the port of San Pedro de Macorís in the summer of 1940.

In Santo Domingo—where they lived for 14 years—Palm worked as a historian and lecturer at the University of Santo Domingo, while his wife Hilde became a photographer of architecture. (She would later on become a writer, adopting the name Hilde Domin in 1959, in honor of the city which gave her refuge.) He quickly became established as one of the leading experts in his field, and elevated the population’s pride in their history to an academic standard.

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