General

American writer and intellectual Walter Lippman "The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples." -Walter Lippman "Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists." -Franklin D. Roosevelt Computer scientist and U.S. Naval Officer Grace Murray Hopper "I handed my passport to the immigration officer, and he looked ...

Adult? YA? Memoir? Chick Lit? Judaic? Spirituality? Bookstores and publishers love categories -- Holocaust, Judaism, Chick Lit, travel, memoir, biography, literary, etc. That's understandable since booksellers have to organize their shelves somehow. The trouble is not all books fit neatly into one category. My books are especially challenging. Both Motherland and Is It Night or Day? have been mis-categorized. Both are often labeled “Holocaust" books, though I would argue that ...

From Teen Reads blog: **** Highly recommended "Chapman makes effective use of a first person, chronological narrative to develop the story. She chooses her scenes well to reveal Edith’s loneliness and isolation as she tries to adjust to her circumstances, and the reader is quickly engaged, and cares what happens to her. Edith comes across as a complex and realistic young person who has much to struggle with. Dialogue is ...

Passport photos: Gerda Katz and Edith Westerfeld In our quest to find my mother's old friend, "Gertie Katz," we discovered that my mother had the wrong spelling of her friend's name. That's not surprising, given that the two knew each other when they were 12 years old -- seventy-three years ago. The two girls immigrated together on the Deutschland. The ship left Bremen, Germany on a cold, gray day, March ...

Ever since my mother left Germany as a 12-year-old in 1938, she couldn't understand what happened to her and why. She viewed her immigration through the eyes of a child. She couldn't understand the political situation in Germany in the 1930s: Consequently, she couldn't sort out who was to blame for her separation from her parents. She didn't see Hitler as the villain; she believed her parents had betrayed her ...

Lost childhood From reader Karin Gordon: "The one scene in the book, Is It Night or Day?, that stays with me is the young boy who lay curled up on the deck crying he wanted to go to the zoo. I was without my parents for several years during the war. "The Germans walked into Denmark in 1940 when I was two years old. When I was four, the Germans ...

Bosnian American fiction writer captures the trauma and legacy of genocide in Love and Obstacles: Stories. He uses the image of a persistent, terrifying bee to poetically portray the endless experience: The bee pursued me relentlessly and unflinchingly, and I was more terrified by its determination than the forthcoming pain: it would not quit even as I was hollering, throwing in the air all the arms I could muster, lunging ...

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has nominated Is It Night or Day? to its Best Fiction for Young Adults (BFYA) list. Here is an explanation of the nomination from the YALSA website: "YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults Committee presents fiction titles published for young adults in the past 16 months that are recommended reading for ages 12 to 18. The purpose of the annual list it to ...

The Deutschland Gertie Katz (from an unknown German town) and Edith Schumer (my mother) of Stockstadt am Rhein immigrated together on the Deutschland. The ship left Bremen, Germany on a cold, gray day, March 8, 1938 and arrived in New York City on a sun-splashed March 19, 1938. Gertie and Edith, who were both 12 years old, became inseparable on the ship. "We had so much in common," Edith says. ...

In 1988, fifty years after Kristallnacht, “Night of Broken Glass,” churches marked the mournful occasion by creating a “Night of Remembrance.” Services were held, candles lit, names of survivors and escapees read at memorials and churches. During those ceremonies, many church leaders asked elder members if they remembered the Jews who once lived in their towns. A grass-roots movement emerged and Germans began to research the Jewish families who once ...