Motherland

My grandmother, Frieda Westerfeld, age 40, in 1938 One of Frieda's letters Trapped in Nazi Germany, my grandmother, Frieda Westerfeld, wrote letters to her family who had escaped to America and South America. Since I have written books about our family history, relatives have sent me those letters to archive. Here are a few excerpts from Frieda's letters written between 1938-1941: After she had sent both of her young daughters ...

My grandmother, Frieda Kahn Westerfeld (age 8), and her three brothers in 1906. She was killed in Camp Biaski in Lublin, Poland in 1941 at the age of 43. For descendants of the Holocaust, family history is one of the great losses. Most of us have few photos, documents or objects from the family's past. We have no storyline of history. We feel an acute sense of discontinuity, dislocation -- ...

My German friend Gert Krell writes: "Guten Rutsch!" "That's what we say in German when we wish someone a 'Happy New Year!' The term 'Rutsch' implies gliding or sliding, in this case into the new year, with the additional implication that people might literally ‘rutsch’ (i.e. slip) on the winter snow or ice. So better have a ‘Guten Rutsch’ than a bad one. "Etymologically, the whole 'Guten Rutsch' probably has ...

Holocaust Memorial at the Darmstadt Train Station The names of Jews who were deported from the train station are etched upon the shards of broken glass.

Writing requires thousands of decisions -- everything from whether to use a comma or a dash to what's in the next chapter. Voices in my head chatter incessantly and sometimes scream out: "Do this. Don't do that." "Speed it up" "Turn right here." "I mean, left." "Here!" Screeeeeeeeeeech. E. L Doctorow has said, "Writing a novel is like driving across country at night. You can only see as far as ...

The Erfelden Museum's exhibit of the old dry goods store The museum of local history in Erfelden, Germany boasts a strange exhibit -- the cabinetry and wall hangings from the dry goods store that once served the town. "The store belonged to the Jewish family named Stein," explained Katarina Kluck, a lifelong resident of the town who organized the display. "When the whole family fled in the late 1930s, the ...

My German friend, Gert Krell, and I are launching a new blog called "Shadows of the Holocaust: An American and a German discuss the legacies of the Nazi era." The blog will be an ongoing conversation between an American and a German that explores how the Holocaust has defined the lives of a generation removed. Here's a brief bio of my German correspondent: Dr. Gert Krell is a retired professor ...

Irving Berlin wrote the best-selling record of all time – the yuletide ballad, “White Christmas.” Irving Berlin? Christmas? That’s right, Irving Berlin, a self-taught Jewish immigrant who chose to name himself after an English actor and a German city. His original name was Israel Baline. In 54 melancholy words, Berlin captured the World War II yearning for happier times, hearth and home, the mythic New England past. Amazingly, the sales ...