Loss

Last Monday, the Chicago Writer's Bloc and Perennial Theatre Chicago met to discuss several new plays -- including one based on my first book, "Motherland" -- which will be featured in a Chicago festival in September 2020. The Perennials are a group of older theater artists, many of whom are part of the Steppenwolf Theater Company. This group recently read the script for "Motherland," and I had chills watching their ...

Yesterday, my mother and I video conferenced with a book club in Basel. Amazed by the technology, Mom turned to me in the middle of our conversation and asked: "Are we really talking to a book club in Basel, Switzerland?!?" When she came to this country, she couldn't call her parents -- who had the first phone in her village, Stockstadt -- because the lines were unreliable and expensive. Some ...

https://www.dailyherald.com/submitted/20200124/author-visits-viking-middle-school

Students delight in meeting Edith, Westerfeld, FSC's mother and the subject of her books. Edith, who is 94 years old now, is living history. She tells students of her childhood experiences during the Holocaust.

https://www.journal-topics.com/articles/author-holocaust-survivor-schedule-return-to-algonquin-middle-school/

https://wedgwoodinseattlehistory.com/2019/11/29/an-immigrant-in-wedgwood-gerdas-story/three-stars-in-the-night-sky-by-fern-schumer-chapman/

My mother's best friend from the ship, Gerda Katz, had saved over 170 letters from her family, who had escaped Nazi Germany to the Dominican Republic in the 1930s. (I included a few of these letters in my book, THREE STARS IN THE NIGHT SKY.) Gerda, who also fled Germany as a 12-year-old unaccompanied minor, was sent to Seattle. She was separated from her family for over 21 years. One ...

https://www.instagram.com/p/B01ZR3JlYt1/

Honored that my book, THREE STARS IN THE NIGHT SKY, is included on this 7th grade required reading list for 2019-2020 at Maui Waena Intermediate School in Kahului, Hawaii! A 2018 Junior Library Guild selection - At the age of 12, Gerda Katz fled Nazi Germany and came to America all by herself as an "unaccompanied minor." Gerda's story of family separation reflects the dislocating trauma, culture shock, and excruciating ...

https://www.amazon.com/Unwanted-America-Auschwitz-Village-Between/dp/1524733199/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+unwanted&qid=1561777121&s=gateway&sr=8-1 (Five stars) The Unwanted is my family story, too. I have come to know the people in my mother's small town in Germany -- Stockstadt am Rhein -- where our family lived for over 200 years. My mother and her sister escaped Germany, but the Nazis murdered my grandparents. Families of both victims and perpetrators continue to wrestle with the legacy of the Holocaust. I've written about this subject ...