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  After decades of silence about her family history, Edith, at 90, tells her story at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center of coming to America alone as a 12-year-old girl. This year, she decided to become a docent at the Skokie, IL museum.

NEW narrative non-fiction book that combines historical documents, pictures, and storytelling to capture the 1938 shipboard friendship of Gerda and my mother, Edith, as the two unaccompanied minors traveled to America; the students' research to locate Gerda decades later; and the reunion of the two friends 73 years after they last saw each other. Books will be available in June. Reserve a copy by emailing me at fernschumer@aim.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWGw9YVqOI0

The Arrow Book Club targets 4th-6th graders. Honored to be featured!

Students created posters based upon each chapter of the book [upper right photo].

  Here's another look at a spread from my NEW narrative non-fiction book for upper elementary and middle school students, "LIKE FINDING MY TWIN: How an Eighth Grade Class Reunited Two Holocaust Refugees." This is in the beginning section of the book, which focuses on the friendship between Gerda and Edith. Copies will be available in June. I'll post more spreads in coming weeks. You can reserve a copy now ...

Here's a glimpse at my NEW narrative non-fiction book for upper elementary and middle school students, "LIKE FINDING MY TWIN: How Two Holocaust Refugees Were Reunited by Mrs. O'Boyle's 8th Graders." Copies will be available in June. I'll post some of the spreads in the coming weeks. You can reserve a copy now by emailing me at fernschumer@aim.com.

Gert Krell, December 5, 2009-12-05   A German Dream   On Thursday, December 3, we went to a concert with a balalaika orchestra of Russians who now live in Germany and a boy choir from Belarus. Parts of the programme were a little too conventional for me (Lara’s theme from the film Dr. Shivago, e.g.), but the musicians were highly professional, and some of the transcriptions for the balalaika orchestra, ...

IS IT NIGHT OR DAY? is a featured book in January 2015 newsletter for Scholastic Canada

Gert: January 1, 2010 Building Bridges Between Incompatible Spaces The magazine of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, my favorite daily newspaper, recently carried a long and fascinating interview with two famous Jewish-German writers: Henryk M. Broder and Maxim Biller. The interview is a kind of intellectual fighting match, full of humour, wit, and irony, focussing on their work, their roles and identities, and their relationship (which hardly seems to exist). I know ...