Separated by the breadth of America, he in New York and I in California, my uncle Herman and I didn’t meet until 1969.
I had been teaching art to middle school students for a year, and I needed a break. I packed my Volkswagen van with camping gear and set off, determined to see the United States—or at least as much of it as I could between mid-June and Labor Day.
The journey took me from New Orleans to the Maine coastline, from Washington DC to Salt Lake City and across the desert to my home on the Pacific coast. New York City was one of my major stops, and this included a visit to my father’s brother and his family on Long Island. Herman, Marge, and their teenage son, Jeff, welcomed me with open arms, pleased to show me the sights of New York. Suddenly my family had grown by three with a new set of relatives, this time from my father’s mysterious family. After that first visit, I traveled to New York often to spend time with my uncle.
Herman loved to talk about his early days at CBS—how he had known Walter Cronkite and Ed Sullivan, shot video of all the presidents since Eisenhower and the rocket launches into space from Cape Canaveral, and how he had even piloted the Goodyear Blimp for five minutes while the Super Bowl was played hundreds of feet below. As interesting as it was to hear him reminisce about television celebrities, what I really wanted to hear were his memories of his childhood in Nazi Germany and his days as a soldier in General Patton’s army. I asked questions and brought my little tape recorder with me, until finally he shared the stories of his war-time adventures.
During our long talks, I came to realize that Herman’s cheerful personality rested on his refusal to dwell on sadness or difficulties. He wanted to tell me only the funny and exciting things—his youthful crushes, his days at the Zebra Room rubbing shoulders with movie people in California, his misadventure in Mexico, and his daredevil days going behind enemy lines for Patton. I also came to understand that he did not have a good memory for details, and he did not want to share any conflicted emotions he might have had. When I asked about anti-Semitic graffiti or other distressing experiences while he was still in Germany, he said, “I was just a schoolboy. I wasn’t really aware of all the bad things that were happening. After Kristallnacht, I think that’s when things really started getting rough.”
By 1991, I had begun to write short stories and articles for the youth market. I had had some luck and several of my pieces were published in children’s magazines. As I listened to Herman talk, an idea formed. What a great book this would make! It was a different kind of Holocaust story—one of adventure, determination, and action. I wanted to write a nonfiction book, a kind of biography, for youth twelve years and older. Ensuring everything was accurate would be essential. Of course, keeping the story true and the background details believable remained a primary concern even as the manuscript evolved into adult historical fiction. But that would come later.
Getting Herman’s memories on tape was only the beginning of the project. Hours of transcribing the oral story into a Word document followed. With written transcripts it was easier for me to sort through the scattered vignettes, underlining key sections and creating a timeline to help with the plotting. Then I began to write.
I soon saw that Herman’s memories alone would not make an interesting book. It needed more details, more historical facts, more description of setting. I dug into my own recollections of family stories told by my father and my grandmother, pored over the letters Herman had written to his mother when he first arrived in California, traveled to England to interview his sister, Edith, about life in London during the Blitz, and visited his cousin, Leonora, who still lived in Chicago. Like a detective, I followed clues as I searched for personal and historical details. All this helped as I wrote the first chapters in which Herman flees Germany, waits in England, then crosses the Atlantic to settle in California.
But when I came up against the army years, I hit a writer’s block. I had no idea what it was like to be a soldier. I needed to know more about the war and the military in order to boost my confidence and begin writing again.
Starting with tidbits of information gleaned from Herman’s memories, and illuminated by my years of reading about the time period, I dug deeper. The process of research became an adventure, a bit like a treasure hunt, and I actually enjoyed it almost as much as writing. Even now, when the manuscript is finished, I can’t stop looking for details that might add depth to Herman’s story. When the book is published and in the hands of readers, I imagine I will still be drawn to anything that might further illuminate Herman’s experiences. One of my plans for this blog is to share what I find and to recommend books or movies about this important time.
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