Trauma

https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20190126/crystal-lake-eighth-graders-learn-history-firsthand-from-holocaust-survivor

Last Thursday, as part of the Woodstock Fine Arts Association Creative Living Series, award-winning author Fern Schumer Chapman captivated the audience with an inspiring presentation. Fern shared the emotional story of her mother, Edith Westerfeld, who painfully fled Nazi Germany in 1938 and journeyed to America as an unaccompanied minor refugee. Fern then described Edith’s return to her small German hometown in 2014 to witness the installation of a memorial ...

https://www.nwherald.com/2019/01/14/author-to-tell-mothers-holocaust-survival-story-in-woodstock/ab0613h/

https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/deerfield/news/ct-dfr-author-visit-schumer-chapman-tl-1220-story.html?fbclid=IwAR34MeI6MacOTtmx-zNMtoSl-LZRVj0x4IHKdudSF_DTNrzQgBy-wxiZ3KU

Presentation at Deerfield High School. Students read IS IT NIGHT OR DAY? and we discussed how the book resonates with today's issues -- restrictive immigration, unaccompanied minors, and anti-Semitism. Thanks to English teacher Stephanie Martin for organizing the event.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/27/opinions/anti-semitism-holocaust-education-intl/index.html?no-st=1543583357&fbclid=IwAR2W9gLlBv20M5NVPyd6rvHwn3EFvg0IvBctjOEeQWc0KCpWWuPZ4T-pFlc

Today is Totensonntag in Germany -- The Sunday of the Dead, a religious holiday in the German Evangelical Church dedicated to the memory of those who have passed away. Each year, a friend and her son remember my family by visiting the stolpersteine memorial stones that were installed in front of the old family home in Stockstadt am Rhein. Here is the picture she sent me today.

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Thank you, HIAS, for saving my mom from Nazi Germany in 1938. She was only 12 years old and no other country would take her or her family. Your Children's Bureau brought her to America. Her parents were murdered.   https://www.facebook.com/HIASrefugees/