My Mother, ... with enormous effort and help from friends and the occupation U.S. Military Government authorities, managed to restore and refurbish the community hall adjoining this [Friedrichstrasse] synagogue after the war. She reassembled the surviving Jews and we enjoyed our first post WWII holy days services in the fall of 1945, together with hundreds of American soldiers stationed in the area. Chaplain/Captain George Vida rededicated our little facility and led the service.
I was re-patriated to Germany and worked for the Betreuungsstelle in Wiesbaden, (assisting former KZ inmates to re-start normal lives) and tried to continue my education, but could not re-establish an emotionally stable life in post-War Germany. I went to the United States on a troupe carrier in 1946, the second such boat which ferried refugees, charging a large sum of money for the privilege. In 1951, I returned briefly to Germany to marry a half-Jewish childhood friend.
During the 1960s and 1970s my former husband's work involved mergers and acquisitions of European industrial firms on behalf of several large American firms ... and we lived in Paris, London, Geneva and Düsseldorf and traveled much throughout Europe and North Africa. In addition to raising our two daughters and assisting my husband in his work as the corporate wife and official hostess, I helped with many of the negotiations, since I speak several languages with native fluency.
Long since divorced, I am now teaching (college and high school), writing, assisting with Holocaust research in the United States and in Germany. I return to Germany several times a year for teach-ins (have been there three times this year alone), have made a series of educational movies, written the script and acted as narrator in a nationally aired (May 1995) television production "Menschen im Abseits," written a book in German, co-authored books, am currently translating "Erziehung im National-sozialismus" ("Education under the Swastika"), written a play "Lambs at Play...for Time," a short story with the same theme "The Children of L414" [which] was runner up for the 1995 Heekin Prize. I am working with Robert Warren on a book "Twilight" about the Holocaust experience in Germany.
My writing and lecturing about the Holocaust, initially, was done for German readers and audiences, out of a sense of frustration and in an attempt to find closure. For the last two or three years I have done the same in this country.
