Description

In this work, the author relates her experiences in Germany from her birth in 1926 to the start of a new life in the US after the World War II. Her father was a Jew, her mother a Christian, and although their marriage shocked some relatives, such "mixed marriages" were not uncommon in the 1920s. She had a happy early childhood, but with Hitler's rise to power, persecution of Jews, including "half Jews" like her, started immediately. Her mother rejected all Nazi pressure to divorce "the Jewish," and some of the non-Jews relatives gave the family loyal support. When her parents finally recognized their mortal danger, it was too late. In 1942, she was sent to a concentration camp. The family pleaded to join her so that they could stay together, but only her father and brother, then 12 years old, were permitted to go with her, ultimately to their deaths at Auschwitz. Her life was narrowly saved by the baffling intervention of two German soldiers, and after the advancing Russians liberated her in 1945, she made a 500-mile trek across the occupation zones for a reunion with her mother in western Germany. She and her mother finally settled in the US in 1947.