ISBN:
9780471224051
Language:
English
Pages:
XII, 241 Seiten
,
Illustrationen
Year of publication:
2007
Keywords:
Berlin
;
Exil
;
Generation 2
;
Erlebnisbericht
;
Schoa
;
USA
Abstract:
The author, a filmmaker who conducted oral history interviews for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation, recounts the affecting experience of her mother, Lotte, a German Jew who barely escaped the fate of family members murdered by the Nazis. In 1938 Lotte followed her new husband to Cuba on the ill-fated S.S. St. Louis. After the ship was turned back to Europe, she was interned in a Dutch detention camp, smuggled out to Cuba and reunited with her husband (from whom she was later divorced). Lotte mostly refused to talk about the past, but a carton sent by three close German Christian friends from her childhood̶Ilonka, Erica and Ursula̶loosened her tongue. These young women, at great personal risk, had collected and preserved photos, documents and artifacts from Lotte's family. Because of their gift, Meyerhoff visited Germany many times to meet the surviving Ursula and Erica and their families. Much of the rambling text deals with the closeness that she developed with them and her desire to integrate her warm feelings toward her new friends with the tragic loss of a homeland that darkened her mother's life in America. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
URL:
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0711/2007006192.html
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