I was born during World War II and raised in southern California where I spent my childhood reading, drawing, whiling away days at the beach, and being nurtured by my Grandma Clara. I knew nothing of my father’s family story other than his childhood in Germany and sudden emigration to the United States. Then, the summer I turned seventeen, a family trip to Europe ignited my love for travel, and after an afternoon in a cemetery, sparked my interest in what it meant to be Jewish, especially in the country of my father’s youth in the shadow of Hitler’s developing power.
It was 1960, little more than 15 years after the war and I knew almost nothing about the Holocaust. I do remember that the 1959 movie, The Diary of Anne Frank, had made a profound impression on me, especially the utterly different sound of Gestapo police sirens which became a symbol of fear in the movie sound track. The first time I heard that same siren sound in Europe, I felt the unmistakable chill of fear creep up my spine. After that summer in Europe, I entered my senior year in high school, surprised by my grandmother’s reticence to talk about what I had discovered that day in the Jewish cemetary.
“I promised your father I’d never talk about it,” she said. “He’ll be angry if he thinks I told you. He made me promise silence when I moved here to live.” She seemed genuinely frightened at the thought of my father’s reaction, which didn’t make sense as he was slow to anger and quick to get over it. “Your mother won’t allow any talk of being Jewish. Her father was from Texas — a Southerner with strong predjudices.”
Ah, now it began to make sense.
From that time on, my grandmother and I had an added bond — our secret. I asked her many questions. Her answers were short, seldom revealing much, but one in particular stuck with me. “I can never trust anyone with a German accent, not since Hitler,” she said, “not until I know the person is Jewish. Not really German, you know.” The secrecy turned the mystery of my father’s Jewish connection into an obsession. I made friends with the only girl in school I knew to be Jewish by the Star of David necklace she wore. In college I joined Hillel, the Jewish youth group. And, starting with This Is My God, by Herman Wouk and Exodus, by Leon Uris, I read everything I could about being Jewish and the Holocaust. Very gradually I unraveled the truth of my father’s early years in Germany, how he, his siblings, and his mother managed to leave that hate-torn country, and why it was never discussed in my home.
Over the years, between attending University, teaching, raising a family, free-lance writing, and volunteering for the Girl Scouts, I filled my bookshelves with stories of the Jewish experience during World War II. I first met my Uncle Herman Lang, my father’s brother, on a trip to the east Coast in 1968 and immediately established a strong connection with him. He was a happy man — someone it was a pleasure to spend time with and who genuinely enjoyed talking and sharing stories from his interesting life as a T.V. cameraman for CBS. However, it wasn’t until the early 1990’s that I began to question him about his youth and discovered the fascinating story of his wartime experiences. It was a saga, not of suffering and concentration camp mightmares, but of luck, determination, and adventure. By that time I had begun writing short stories for the children’s market and had experienced some minor success with them. I knew from the beginning that Herman’s story would fascinate young people and adults alike. I decided to bring it to readers.
Interviewing my uncle and doing the research necessary to make his story come alive, as well as historically accurate, became a labor of love and self-discovery.
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