Chapman, Fern Schumer

When 89-year-old Edith Westerfeld returns to the small German town where her Jewish family had lived for hundreds of years to witness the installation of a memorial to her family--part of an effort throughout Europe to confront the genocide of World War II, she experiences how art is helping today's generation face and atone for crimes of the past.

At the age of 12, Gerda Katz fled Nazi Germany and came to America all by herself. Decades before the label gained recognition, she became what's now known as an unaccompanied minor. Gerda's story of family separation reflects the dislocating trauma, culture shock, and excruciating loneliness many unaccompanied minor immigrants experience. As Gerda becomes an American, she never stops longing to be reunited with her family. Three Stars in the Night Sky illuminates the personal damage of racism in three countries---Nazi Germany, the Dominican Republic, and the United States during the 1930s and 40s---and the emotional devastation of a child coming to a new country alone.

"Through pictures and words, readers witness the installation of memorial "stumbling stones," for one family - an acknowledgement of German wrongdoing during World War II."--Publishers.

This remarkable work of narrative non-fiction brings readers to a Stolpersteine (Stumbling Stones) ceremony in Stockstadt am Rhein, Germany.

The author shares the story of the life-transforming journey she took with her mother, Edith, to Germany in an attempt to help Edith rediscover the culture, traditions, and friends lost when she was sent by her parents to America in 1938 to protect her from the Nazi onslaught.

Twelve-year-old Edith is sent from her home in Germany in 1938 to live with her aunt and uncle in Chicago, Illinois, and escape Nazi persecution, but as she struggles to assimilate into American society, Edith worries about her parents and mourns the loss of everything she has known. Includes information on an American rescue operation that saved twelve hundred Jewish children between 1934 and 1945.

Twelve-year-old Edith is sent from her home in Germany in 1938 to live with her aunt and uncle in Chicago, Illinois, and escape Nazi persecution, but as she struggles to assimilate into American society, Edith worries about her parents and mourns the loss of everything she has known. Includes information on an American rescue operation that saved twelve hundred Jewish children between 1934 and 1945.