Category: History-world-war-II and travel destinations.

The Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 (see blog “Loss of Citizenship the Nuremberg Way,” posted May 29, 2015) continued to be amended and fine-tuned for the next four years.  Ever stricter, these laws codified Hitler’s anti-Jewish policy and gave the Nazi regime deadly control over the Jews living in Germany and the occupied countries. One…

Dear Readers, I am taking a break from writing in order to spend time with family and friends over the Holidays.  However, the first week of December always reminds me of the disastrous day that resulted in the United States entering World War II. In Immigrant Soldier, Herman is in Los Angeles on leave when he…

1940: “The news from Britain was ominous. Herman began to have trouble getting to sleep at night. He would lie in bed for hours, his mind a jumble of worries, watching the dawn light creep through his apartment window. He could not banish thoughts of his mother and sister trapped in London while German planes…

Herman arrived in California in mid-December 1939, after a long cross-country trip on a Trailways bus. As a new immigrant, all he wanted was a place to put down roots, a job that could sustain him, and a better life than he had lived in Germany under Hitler.  What he found was paradise. The letters…

Herman arrived in Chicago to visit with his relatives on a cold and blustery day in November 1939. The city had a large and growing Jewish community, many of whom were actively involved in aiding refugees from Nazi Germany. In fact, without the affidavit of financial support from Herbert Oberfelder, Herman would probably not have…

“While Herman enjoyed the intoxicating scene at the Zebra Room, the news from Europe continued to spiral downward. . . . Headlines blared the harsh news of the  massacre at Dunkirk . . .”   Dunkirk marked the dismal failure of the Battle of France in May 1940. In the United States, the word Dunkirk represents…

Only weeks after Herman’s mother arrived in England, Germany invaded Poland. Within days, Britain and France declared war on Germany in response. “Mother and son now found themselves not only refugees but also classified as enemy aliens in a foreign land.” The internment of such civilian nationals of enemy countries was standard practice at the…

  When Herman sits huddled under blankets on the tossing deck of the Husima Maru during his winter crossing of the Atlantic, he thinks of many things from his childhood, including the scary picture book that his father sometimes read to him. Struwwelpeter was a popular children’s book in much of Europe in the early years of the…

In the second chapter of Immigrant Soldier, Herman speeds toward home on his motorcycle, his mind a swirl of thoughts. “He knew it was finally time for him to make a move, but he had no idea how to escape. He was without a passport and no longer considered a citizen of the German nation. He…

A few weeks ago, one of my readers asked me an interesting question. “How did the Nazis find all the Jewish people, especially people like Herman’s family who didn’t practice the religion?” My first response was the usual, perhaps obvious, one. “The German’s were meticulous record keepers,” I explained. “They gathered information from city, church,…