For more information, please visit:

http://highlandlcblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/fern-schumer-chapman-visits-highland.html

From the blog:

http://googlingtheholocaust.wordpress.com/

Many of us know about the Kindertransport in which 10.000 children were sent to Great Britain, but not many know about the One Thousand Children project, and for good reason. It was kept secret in order for it to work.

“An operation, quietly carried out because of fear that a backlash from isolationist and anti-Semitic forces could cause its demise, the “underground railroad” these children traveled to safety spanned three continents and two oceans, was fueled by donations of ordinary people and the work of hundreds of volunteers and ran for almost eleven years.

“Yet, mention of it will not be found in American history books. Museums and memorials do not celebrate the lives of these children and the individuals and organizations who rescued them. There are no movies about it. Its heroes are not heralded and its villains not reproved. Few Americans know of it and only one scholar has studied and written about the subject.

“Most of the 1,000 children themselves are unaware they were part of the organized efforts of a network of cooperation of private American citizens and organizations between 1934 and 1945 to bring to America as many endangered children as possible, nor, that this was accomplished in the face of powerful economic, social, political, religious and governmental constraints that had such a devastating outcome for the eleven million people who perished in the Holocaust.”

To avoid detection, only 10 children were placed on a ship at a time. They traveled as unaccompanied minors and were then sent to live with distant relatives or in foster homes throughout the United States.

Fast forward to 2010. Fern Schumer Chapman wrote a young adult novel, Is it Night or Day?, based on her mother’s journey as part of the One Thousand Children project. While on the ship, her mother Edith befriended another refugee, Gertie. The two grew close during the voyage but once separated upon arrival in New York, they never saw each other again.

Teacher Catie O’Boyle assigned the book to her eighth grade class at Madison Junior High School in Naperville, Ill. Her students enjoyed the book but were  frustrated that the author’s attempt to reunite her mother and Gertie proved futile. But they were also inspired, so much so that they harnessed the power of the Web and found Gertie in two weeks’ time. Seventy-three years after the fact, Edith and Gertie saw each other again.

This goes right to the heart of my book, Googling the Holocaust. If we act fast enough we can still find happy endings for the Holocaust survivors still alive today. It’s an amazing feeling to watch it unfold, like I did with my mother-in-law, Hana Berger Moran. Born in a concentration camp, she found the American soldier who saved her life. Via Google. Sixty years later. It’s a beautiful story. Stay tuned for the book.

Naperville students reconnect women who fled Nazis in 1938

It was a brief email that rekindled an equally short childhood friendship 73 years ago.

“I have thought of you often and am so thankful that you found me,” Gerda “Gertie” Frumkin wrote from Seattle on April 28. “Can’t wait until we speak together.”

Signed “with love,” the email made its way to 86-year-old Edith Westerfeld in Skokie.

It was the determination — and technological prowess — of an eighth-grade class at Naperville’s Madison Junior High School that made the message possible. Frumkin’s greeting was the first time she had been in contact with Westerfeld since they had spent about two weeks together in 1938 while escaping Nazi Germany.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Westerfeld told the eighth-graders Friday at a reception in her honor. Her daughter, Fern Schumer Chapman of Lake Bluff, described the reunion as a “dream come true.”

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-05-13/news/ct-met-naperville-reunion-0514-20110513_1_naperville-students-eighth-grade-nazis

 

Edith's German school picture

From the German publisher of Mutterland:

Dear Fern and Edith,
Can write us some sentences for the students and children who are able
to read your book, maybe some experiences or impressions after your readings
with children and young people in America and in Germany?
 
As child, my mother, Edith Westerfeld, was labeled as "other" in two
countries. In Germany, she was identified as inferior and undesirable
for being Jewish, even though her family viewed itself as German first
and Jewish second. (Edith's father was a decorated World War I
veteran.) In America, Edith struggled to fit into her new home, new
school, new classmates where she didn't know the culture, the language
or the people. In fact, in America Edith felt so alienated that, 73 years
later, she still remembers the name of one of the only students who was kind and
smiled at her -- "Doug."

One of the most poignant moments my mother and I have shared over the
last years was in a high school in Frankfurt, Germany. I gave a speech
to a group of 80 students who had read Motherland in English. At the end
 of the speech, I introduced my mother to the group. Edith looked around
the classroom and said these words: "I see many different faces in your class,
 students from all around the world. I must ask those of you who have lived in
Germany for a long time, "What do you do to welcome those students who are not
like you? What do you do to make those students feel like they are part of your
community?" 

The wounds of feeling unwanted and unwelcome do not heal quickly.

AZ Lost Boys Center Phoeniz AZ

An article in Sunday’s New York Times reported that s a new digital archive is now available for the “Lost Boys of Sudan.” The archive offers some of the Sudanese refugees who fled their country as children records of their personal war stories.

The newspaper reported (in italics below) that Malek Deng, a refugee who fled at the age of 14, examined some of the papers from his war-torn childhood that he had never seen before. “The papers said he was born in a village called Thur Kuol in the Bahr al-Gazal region of southwestern Sudan. The documents listed Mr. Deng’s relatives and recounted how he tended cattle before civil war drove him from his family. He has explained to the interviewers that he fled with other Lost Boys to avoid being kidnapped by soldiers from northern Sudan.

“It’s amazing to see,” said an emotional Mr. Deng, now a medical technician in his mid-30s who lives in Phoenix. “It’s proof of my past. In my head, I know what I went through. I can tell people verbally, but now I have some records to prove it.”

Often, refugees (like my mother) lose so much of themselves in their immigration — home, country, family, language, identity. One of the greatest losses is people — family and friends — to cross-reference experiences, witnesses to childhood to share or contradict recollections, provide testimony and a frame of reference.

In the absence of those people, records and pictures fill in some of the blanks. “This photo is all I have of my childhood,” Kuol Awan, executive director of the AZ Lost Boys Center and a refugee himself, said as he gazed at a snapshot taken when he was about 15. “I can show this to my grandchildren one day when I tell them stories about my life.”

Gert Krell

My German blog partner, Gert Krell, has responded to my entry below called My grandfather’s life and death. Here are some of his comments:

“Next time I go to Darmstadt to visit my grandparents’ grave (they are urn-buried), I will also visit the Jewish cemetery at Groß-Gerau and look for your grandfather’s tombstone. I deeply regret what my country has done to your family, that your grandfather was murdered and thus died long before his time, and that you never had a chance to get to know him. My grandfather died at the Elisabeth Hospital in Darmstadt in 1961 at the age of 75, from cancer. I loved him very much, and I am beginning to get a sense of what you missed and probably still do.”

A retired professor of international relations from the Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main, German, Dr. Gert Krell was a director of research and also the executive director at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). He briefly served as the assistant director for regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. Gert writes scholarly articles and is working on a book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

To read our ongoing conversation, please visit: www.shadowsoftheholocaust.com

Rwanda - Stories for Hope http://storiesforhope.org/

The New York Times Business section on Sunday, October 10, 2010 profiles Patricia Pasick, Director of Stories for Hope in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The foundation was started to help Rwandans tell their stories from the 1994 genocide.

After his entire family was killed in the genocide, a Rwandan secretary general asked Ms. Pasick, who was visiting the country at the time, “What do I tell my children as they get older?” Ms. Pasick reports that he was worried that when his children learned about their grandparents’ deaths, the stories would traumatize them.

“As a family therapist, I knew that it would be damaging if people remained quiet,” Ms. Pasick said. “We learned from the Holocaust that many in the next generation really suffered from the silences. If you don’t know what happened in the past, your mind can distort the facts. These distortions can create a disturbing intergenerational legacy.”

Consequently, Ms. Pasick created Stories for Hope to train counselors and conduct interviews with Rwandian survivors. “We hope to bring balanvce to stories of loss so that survivors don’t think they’ve lost all he richness in their lives and culture.”

Here is the link to the project: http://storiesforhope.org/

My grandfather, Siegmund Westerfeld, was born in Stockstadt am Rhein on September 22, 1891. His mother, Sarah Westerfeld, gave birth to him in the family home that their ancestors had built in 1721. (I believe my mother, born in 1925, was the first child in the family who was born in a hospital in Crumstadt.) Siegmund was the third son. (Both my grandparents, Sigmund and Frieda, had the same family constellation – three boys and a girl.)

Siegmund Westerfeld and his parents

Siegmund served in World War I and received the Iron Cross for his service in the German Army. He became a successful businessman in Stockstadt and something of a community leader; no one in town brought crops to market without Siegmund’s services. The Westerfelds were trailblazing, owning the first car and installing the first telephone in the area. Sigmund introduced the cucumber as a cash crop. In addition, he was known for his sharp wit and tasty homemade sausage.

Perceiving the dangers in the late 1930s, Siegmund and my grandmother Frieda decided to send their daughters to America. Most rescue programs only took one child per family, yet somehow, they were able to place both daughters on ships out of Germany (I suspect Siegmund bribed the authorities.) He hoped that he and Frieda and his mother, Oma Sarah, would follow. However, Oma Sarah refused to leave her homeland.

Complicating matters, Siegmund and Frieda had signed a deed that decreed that the couple would care for Oma Sarah for all her remaining days. In exchange, they would inherit the Westerfeld home and all of its belongings. As Nazism intensified, Siegmund’s brothers and sisters escaped Germany, fleeing to Palestine and South America. But that deed essentially locked Siegmund and Frieda into staying in Germany and caring for Oma Sarah. She wouldn’t leave because she said, “I was born a German and I will die a German.” Siegmund wouldn’t emigrate without his mother.

In time, no one would do business with Siegmund since an SS guard was stationed at the front door. Eventually, without any income, the Westerfelds were forced to sell their large home, which had been in the family for over 200 years. As a prominent Nazi took ownership of the house, Siegmund, Frieda and Oma Sarah were forced to rent and live in one room. Eventually, the Nazis made the family leave Stockstadt in the early 1940s and live in a Jew House on Sudetengaustrasse in Darmstadt (his last known address). While there, local companies such as Volkswagen forced Siegmund and other Jews in the house to serve as slave laborers.

Sadly, Siegmund was taken to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp on June 14, 1941. I learned from the Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen that Siegmund Israel Westerfeld (all Jewish men in Nazi Germany were assigned the name “Israel”) confessed to “mosaisch” — that he believed in the laws of Moses. The record shows that he was assigned the number 38067 and he lived in hut 38. He died on February 15, 1942. The record does not report the cause of his death.

Siegmund Westerfeld’s grave

As you know, there are no markers or graves for Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. However, in the Jewish cemetery in Groß-Gerau, there is a headstone for Siegmund, though it is highly unlikely that his remains are buried there. No one knows who placed the stone there. Engraved on it is my grandfather’s full name, Siegmund Westerfeld. Just beneath, someone has scratched with a sharp tool the words, “Sarah Westerfeld.” On the other side of the headstone, Siegmund’s name is written in Hebrew.

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To listen to the interview, go to http://www.theauthorsshow.com/