Category: Characters – Ashes and Ruins
The Long Path to Auschwitz – Part 2
Racial Hate Laws One Step at a Time, with Family Notes: An Article in Three Parts Part II: 1936 to 1938: The Nuremberg Laws, Aryanization, Emigration, and the Anschluss. DESPITE THE MANDATED QUIET during the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, sporadic outbursts of anti-Jewish episodes occurred in various places in Germany. In smaller cities and…
The Long Path to Auschwitz: A Three-Part Article
Racial Hate Laws One Step at a Time, with Family Notes Prologue WHEN I WROTE ASHES AND RUINS, the historical novel based on the true experiences of my grandmother Clara, I knew some regular readers of Holocaust novels would be puzzled by the absence of terror and misery. The majority of books about the Jewish…
How German Jews Lost Their Birthright Citizenship
Originally published as Loss of Citizenship the Nuremberg Way on May 29, 2015 on my personal blog, this article has been slightly modified to make it more current. Also published on kathrynslattery.substack.com on 05/09/2026 * In the second chapter of Immigrant Soldier, Herman speeds toward home on his motorcycle, his mind a swirl of thoughts.…
Policing a Police State
Some weeks ago, I wrote about the Nazi SA and promised to follow up with a discussion of the SS (the Schutzstaffel) and the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei). * AFTER HITLER CAME TO POWER, Germany became a totalitarian state that used a complex and brutal system of policing to enforce its policies. The SS was soon the…
Thugs in the Street: What was the Nazi SA?
Recently I read an article comparing ICE today with the German Sturmabteilung (SA) in the early years of Hitler’s Nazi government. (For the link, see below.) The content of the article was chilling, and I see the parallels clearly. After reading the article, I wondered if my readers were fully aware of the role the…
Hooray! I am celebrating!!
Ashes and Ruins hits the shelves of bookstores on January 31, 2026. I’m pleased to announce the release of my latest historical novel. Based on a true story, Ashes and Ruins brings readers the full story of Clara and Edith, characters introduced in Immigrant Soldier. In the new stand-alone novel, mother and daughter come alive…
Why Did Jews Stay So Long in Nazi Germany?
READERS OF MY HISTORICAL NOVEL, Immigrant Soldier, have asked me why the two main characters remained in Germany after Hitler came to power. Indeed, along with a few kind words, one reader wrote in a review, “I really didn’t like Clara, because she stayed too long in Germany. Why didn’t she leave earlier?” This is…
The Memory of Smells
PETER NOTICED THE SCENT of lavender first and looked up from cleaning the meat slicer. The young woman peered into his glass case. Under her loose dress, her pregnant belly was noticeably bigger than the last time she came into the shop. “Please, Mr. Whitacre,” she said. “I’d like two of those lovely white chicken…