Survivor's Odyssey: From Oppression to Reconciliation - Couverture rigide

Wiener, Richard

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1479794716 ISBN 13 : 9781479794713

Editeur : Xlibris Corporation, 2013

Synopsis

As I sit by my window, gazing out over the autumnal park, the turning leaves straining in the gusting west wind, and a suggestion of morning sun stippling a clump of trees in the near distance, my thoughts return to the view from my childhood room on Lutherstrasse, a bourgeois, cobblestone-paved street in Wittenberg lined with neatly spaced lindens.

How tranquil it all seemed then. Like other early childhoods contemplated late in life, mine seems idyllic in retrospect. A cozy home, devoted parents, playmates and relatives nearby. Who could have predicted then that Wittenberg, this ancient town, the cradle of the Protestant Reformation, would soon, like the rest of Germany, be swept up in the fanaticism and hysteria of National Socialism?

When did I first realize that I was not just another German child, that I was merely tolerated, later reviled, and finally cast out? How strange it seems now that it took so long for me to comprehend that what was happening to me and my fellow Jews was extraordinary.

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur

My life has been a journey from victimhood to life affirmation. A child survivor of the Holocaust, I lived for six years under the Nazi regime, and, as the only Jew in my school, was harassed by my Hitler Youth classmates on a daily basis. In November 1938, my father was shipped off to concentration camp, and I witnessed the destruction of my home by Nazi thugs. A few months before the outbreak of World War II, I escaped to England with the famous Kindertransport and, when the bombs began falling on London, I was evacuated with my school and lived for a year with an English foster family. In 1940, at the height of the Atlantic U-boat campaign, I sailed for New York with my parents. After service in the U.S. Army, I worked my way around the west at hard labor jobs, then studied at Columbia and Princeton, and ultimately became an international patent lawyer. My original ambition, to become a novelist, was not fulfilled. I live in Rockville, Maryland, am divorced, and have two children and two grandchildren. I have traveled widely and consider myself a citizen of the world. In my '80s now, I am active in The ManKind Project, a men's organization conducting transformational trainings on four continents, as a community leader, group facilitator and mentor. Having been honored by my German home town, and having experienced reconciliation with my former Hitler classmates, I now speak widely on that subject, and conduct a workshop called The Power of Forgiveness. While I have never experienced "survivor guilt" I do attempt to conduct my life so as to be worthy of my survival.

Présentation de l'éditeur

This book transports the reader to the very beginnings of the Nazi regime, as seen through the eyes of a young boy - the only Jew in a school of Hitler Youths in a small medieval German town. It is his life journey - his traumatic experience of Kristallnacht . . . the destruction of his home . . . separation from his parents . . . exile . . . post-war reconciliation with his ex-classmates . . . forgiveness . . . and ultimate grant of honorary citizenship - that provides the reader with a rich, inspiring you-are-there experience seldom encountered in the Holocaust canon.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Xlibris Corporation
• Date d'édition: 2013
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1479794716
• ISBN 13: 9781479794713
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 276
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
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