Shadows of the Holocaust

In an ongoing correspondence, a member of the German Society to Preserve Jewish Culture repeatedly invited a Jewish man, who had fled his hometown of Warfelden when he was 14, to return to Germany for a visit. The Jewish man refused, stating that he would never return because former Nazis still lived in the town: In one letter, he listed the names of those he believed were Nazis. Eventually, the ...

In 1938, my grandparents, sensing the growing anti-Semitism in Germany, sent my mother to live in America, all by herself. She was twelve years old. She was part of an unknown American rescue operation later named "the One Thousand Children," which sought to place child refugees in foster families to escape Nazi persecution. The children knew little of what was happening to them, and my mother would not know her ...

A recent New York Times (Sunday, Feb. 28, 2010) review of Dani Shapiro’s new memoir, Devotion, underscores the general insensitivity and lack of understanding of trauma. Here is the link to the review: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/books/review/Newman-t.html The book captures Shapiro’s discontent, despite the fact that her life is going well: After two failed marriages, she has a husband she adores; her ill son now is recovered; she has a beautiful home and ...

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 Fern Schumer Chapman - Is it Day or Night? Please welcome author Fern Schumer Chapman. Junior Library Guild has selected her new book, Is It Night or Day? (March 2010), as a spring title. In a starred review, Booklist called the work ''powerful and eloquent,'' adding, ''as with the best writing, the specifics about life as a young immigrant are universal.'' A prequel to Chapman's first ...

Ruth Kluger's memoir, "Still Alive" Ever since she turned 12 years old in 1938, my mother suffered with a profound sense of rejection because her parents chose to send her to safety in America. Throughout her life, my mother continued to see this act through the lens of a child. She felt her parents didn't love her enough to keep her in Germany. She didn't blame Hitler for her situation; ...

I read this quote this morning: "To emigrate is to become a foreigner in two places at once." Or to emigrate can mean living in two places at once. As I wrote in Motherland: "Memory for most is a kind of afterlife; for my mother, it is another form of life...For her, scenes from decades ago had their own immediacy. Her inner life is schizophrenically filled with both the here ...

The Jewish Babe Ruth, "Hammerin' Hank" Baseball star Hank Greenberg is a small but significant character in my new book, "Is It Night or Day?" The book, based upon my mother's experiences, captures Edith's immigration in 1938 and her assimilation into American culture. Frightened, isolated, and ridiculed in her new environment, Edith finds solace in baseball. At that time, Comiskey Park offered free admission for women on Thursdays (Ladies' Day), ...

Searching for a metaphoric home Pulitzer-prize winning novelist Carol Shields once said that “a great novel should follow the character’s search for a metaphoric home.” I’ve thought a lot about that comment recently; it resonates with Is It Night or Day? in two ways. First, that is the trajectory of Edith’s story. She is a child immigrant searching for a home, physically and metaphorically. Young Edith's bewildered efforts to assimilate ...

It's a book!!! In bookstores March 16th.

Is It Night or Day? Fern Schumer Chapman. Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, $16.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-374-17744-7 Chapman, who wrote about her family's Holocaust ordeal in the adult book Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust, assumes the voice of her mother, Edith, who at age 12 is sent by her Jewish parents from increasingly anti-Semitic Germany to live in America with relatives. Edith's plaintive narration describes her father's mounting fear of the Nazis ...