Category: History-world-war-II
Soup with Potato Pete
Vichyssoise and Potage of Potatoes and Leeks, both with Sorrel Butter DURING WORLD WAR II in the UK, every child and every housewife knew Potato Pete. The rotund, anthropomorphic potato wore a jaunty hat, spats, and well-polished black shoes. He greeted the kids and their mothers from posters, newspaper ads, and the popular radio show,…
Eating, Living, and Starving on the Ration
FOR THOSE WHO LIVED THROUGH WORLD WAR II, food rationing was a core experience. While writing Ashes and Ruins, I began to wonder: Did rationing in Japan differ from rationing in Germany? Was rationing in the US anything like the ration policy in Britain? With these questions in my head, I dove into the research…
The Camp Kitchener Rescue
STORIES ABOUND ABOUT THE KINDERTRANSPORT and the rescue of thousands of children from the clutches of the Nazis in the early days of 1939. At the same time, but lesser known because it came without images of small children to stir a viewer’s heart, the Camp Kitchener Rescue saved countless Jewish men held in German…
Three Waves of Emigration: Three Visas
Roads to Safety for German-Jewish Refugees AFTER THE RISE OF THE NAZI REGIME, life in Germany became difficult for citizens of Jewish heritage. Some Jews, like my father, fled immediately after Hitler came to power. Others, like my grandmother, waited, trying to accommodate their lives to the new reality. As conditions for Jews became increasingly…
Books and Bombs
Or What Women (and Men) Read During the Blitz WHAT WOULD YOU READ if bombs were falling every night while you hunkered down in a crowded bomb shelter with only the light of a torch (a flashlight) to illuminate the page? During such times, it’s a common reaction to want to immerse oneself in a…
Schlaraffia, A Beacon of Laughter in Nazi Germany
After I wrote my three-part article about Jewish life in Nazi Germany, I began to wonder if there was any way for an assimilated German-Jewish man in the 1930s, a man like my grandfather, Hugo Lang, to escape his worries and concerns for an evening. A way to inject some fun into his serious life.…
The Long Path to Auschwitz – Part 3
Racial Hate Laws One Step at a Time, with Family Notes Part III: 1939 to 1941: Kristallnacht to the Final Solution Kristallnacht: A Nazi Pogrom On the night of November 9–10, 1938, a nationwide anti-Jewish riot swept across Germany. Twenty-four hours of state-sponsored terror ensued. Synagogues were burned while firefighters watched, Jewish-owned shops were vandalized…
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: Summer 1935 to 1938: The Nuremberg Laws, Aryanization, Emigration, and the Anschluss. The Nuremberg Laws: A biological solution to assimilation. Less than a month after the closing ceremonies of the Berlin Olympics, the eighth annual Nuremberg Rally…
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…
A Question of Suffering and Denial: Pre-war Germany
A FEW WEEKS AGO, I was having tea with a good friend when she said she had some questions about my new book, Ashes and Ruins. Always eager to talk about my work, I assured her that she could ask me anything. “How much of the book is true?” she said. Having been asked this…