Chapter summaries and further material

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These pages will make most sense to people who have read (or are reading) the book, which will be published on 23 April 2025.

Prologue (no additional material.) In 2004, when I was 46, my father sent the passport of his aunt, Margarete Lanzer, my grandfather’s older sister. He stated that the Nazis murdered her, and noted other close relatives who were victims. I’d never heard of these family members. His disclosures, a year before he died in his eightieth year, were shocking. The passport was the start of my journey into the past.

Ch. 1 Dawn. I was born in London in 1958. My consciousness awakes; it unfolds as an English child. Words are puzzling; some are laden with horror: Did germs have anything to do with Germans? What are Jews? Fond childish memories of my paternal grandparents; what language did they speak when they thought they were alone, but I could hear them? 

Ch. 2 The Black Forest. Why I left England in 1981 aged twenty-three and started a new life in Freiburg, southwest Germany. The German-Jewish sewing thread company, Gütermann, for whom my grandfather and father worked for.

Ch. 3 The person who wrote this book.  Connecting my past with the writing of this story. What happened between 1981 and 2011. I meet Buddy Elias, Anne Frank’s cousin, and first encounters with the bewildering sadness and shifts in consciousness associated with researching my paternal family and the Holocaust. 

Ch. 4 Letters. In 2011, six years after my father’s death, while visiting England, I found hundreds of letters my father had written to his parents during WWII. These letters became the book’s backbone and were a compelling bridge to the unspoken past. 

Ch. 5 Bruno. My paternal grandfather, we were close. As a child or young adult, I never noticed that he didn’t speak about the past. Bruno was a citizen of the collapsed Austrian-Hungarian empire, and a POW in Siberia during WWI. Bruno returned from Russia in 1920 to the newly founded state of Czechoslovakia. Bruno’s friendship with Heinz Gütermann, his business and the house in Troppau, Czechoslovakia he built for his family. Troppau is now Opava in the Czech Republic.

Ch. 6 Marianne. My warm-hearted and intelligent paternal grandmother. She shared so little of the past that she would not even tell her inquisitive little granddaughter (me) how old she was. Marianne never mentioned her mother, Therese, who stayed in Troppau when the Jewish family emigrated from Czechoslovakia to England in 1938/39 to escape the Nazis.

Ch. 7 Irma. Bruno’s youngest sister, Irma, also emigrated in time from Troppau to England. Her husband was Alfred, I knew them both; they died when I was 7. In a tragic document from 1943 that has survived the years, Irma recorded losing her will to live before deciding to leave because of Nazi persecution. Irma wrote about the dramatic happenings surrounding the arrival of her niece, Susi, 19, in March 1939. The document reveals Irma’s guilt and self-reproach for supporting her niece’s emigration because Susi committed suicide in 1940.

Ch. 8 Grete. Bruno’s older sister, it was her passport that my father had sent me in 2004. I find documents about Grete online; she looked disturbingly like Bruno, my much-loved grandfather. This was the most difficult chapter to write. Reading about the unspeakable Nazi atrocities was challenging, and I procrastinated. However, this was not the only reason I struggled writing the chapter. I became increasingly aware of a bodily sensation related to my family’s hushing strategy regarding the Holocaust. I tell what it was like to overcome it. I find out Grete's final fate at the hands of the Nazis.

Ch. 9 Eva. My father’s sister, Eva, my exotic aunt, whose use of language was generously peppered with swear words. Eva wrote a compelling piece in 1945 about her return to Czechoslovakia after the war. I explore Eva’s document, an emotional record of hope, excitement, and disillusionment. Eva knew her dearly loved maternal grandmother, Therese, had not survived the war; her sorrow, bitterness, and pain. Eva's identity issues when she returned ‘home’ to Opava after six years of exile in England. The Russians as an occupying power and a threat. 

Ch. 10 Else. Bruno’s younger sister, whom my father also noted, but only by surname on Grete’s passport. Else was difficult to find, and there was little data online about her fate. After years of searching, with the help of the Arolsen Archives, I discover documents about Else and her husband, who was Karl Federmann. I find out their tragic fates at the hands of the Nazis.

Ch. 11 HPV, My father. His letters to his parents during WWII from a boarding school in England reveal how he managed his situation; he took most things in his stride. A close mother-son relationship, and insight into tensions with his sister, Eva. His identity issues. My father’s life in Czechoslovakia after the war. The Russians again as a threat and occupying force. My father returned forever to England in 1947 as the country of his birth fell behind the Iron Curtain.

Ch. 12 Therese. My father’s maternal grandmother. Therese was Marianne’s mother and was the third relative my father noted in Grete’s passport as a victim of the Nazis. Shrouded in unclarity, various narratives about Therese’s fate trickled down to other family members through the generations, but I had never heard of her. After years of searching, I find details of her fate online in the summer of 2021 and describe what making that harrowing discovery was like.

Ch. 13 Johanna and Martha. Johanna was Bruno's mother and her account of her seventieth birthday in 1930 has survived the years. It gives insight into the close-knit family and Johanna's birthday in times before tragedy struck. Johanna was the oldest of fourteen children; her youngest sister was Martha, Bruno’s aunt. Martha went into hiding with her husband during the war and got through it – how is unknown. I often heard mention of Tante Marta as a child, but I didn’t know who she was, and I never met her.

Ch. 14 The Wilhelm Family. Alfred was Marianne’s brother - my great-uncle. Alfred created a huge archive and donated it to the University of Zurich, which I found by coincidence. I drew on the archive to understand this family’s wartime experience. They were on the run from the Nazis in France to enter Switzerland illegally in 1942. Heinz Gütermann in Zurich, Bruno’s friend, provided emotional and organisational support. With chilling synchronicity, exactly when I started researching Alfred’s family’s experience during WWII, Putin began his war on Ukraine.

Ch. 15 Melitta. Alfred and Marianne’s sister, Melitta, married a German, who porced her on racial grounds when the Nazis came to power. Melitta also fled to England, but wanted to return to Opava/Troppau after the war. In the end, Melitta's life was tragic; she lost her home, husband, son, and grandson. She died in 1950 in London, and little is known about her.

Ch. 16 Opava. In 2016, my cousin Julia (Eva’s daughter), and I found the family’s house in Czechoslovakia, still standing nearly eighty years after the family had fled to England, leaving everything behind. We visited and tears and anguish overcame us as we were shown around the house which is now used by a State Calibration Institute. The experience was also healing and liberating. I found a memorial to Therese in Opava’s Jewish cemetery.

In Prague we discovered Grete and Else’s names - and their husband's - on the memorial to the murdered Jews from the Czech lands painted on the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue.

Ch. 17 Julia and Nicola. A transcription of a conversation about why our family failed to address our Jewish heritage and traumatic WWII experiences. Eva’s personality and her denial of her Jewish identity in the shadow of the Holocaust. How trauma is passed on to the following generation.

Ch. 18 Connecting Links. A final chapter ties up open ends and adds some further people and facts. Astonishingly, I find a great-grandchild from Karl Federmann’s first marriage in Australia, and we meet online and exchange stories. (Karl was one of three brothers-in-law that Bruno had, he was Else's husband. Else was Karl's second wife, his first had died young.) How strange coincidences played a role in writing the book, such as meeting a historian in Prague via a social media post who generously helped me with the research.

Epilogue. Making sense of the reasons for hushing the Holocaust and why the unspoken was ‘normal’ in my family. Finding the truth about the previous generation’s experiences and struggles was a transformational journey. Unexpected, suppressed stories have returned to the open. My generation is a bridge to the past to ensure we never forget. In some documents I’ve drawn upon, the Russians are seen as a threat and an occupying power. History seems to be tragically repeating itself with Putin’s war on Ukraine.