From Generation to Generation
Every family has a story. I guarantee it. Turning 70 five years ago, I realized my time was racing by. If I wanted to preserve my family history, I had better get to work.
The result of my adventure is a published book entitled In the Wake of Madness: My Family’s Escape from the Nazis — a blend of anecdotes, history, and memoir. What began as a way to ensure
my grandchildren knew from whence they came eventually took on greater meaning.
Fortunately, I had interviewed my mom in 1995 when she was 88 and I exactly half her age. Since my parents rarely talked of the past when I was a child, I was astonished as my mom’s memories came tumbling out.
My scribbled notes gathered dust for decades until, in 2019, I decided to revisit them and corroborate the personal stories with documented historical details. Thanks to the Internet, secrets once held only in the depths of libraries were now at my fingertips. I had many unanswered questions: Why was my mother held in a Belgian jail? How did they get a passport from the Dominican Republic? How did my grandmother escape from Berlin through China to Chile?
What I found was eye-opening. But what makes this story so authentic was this unexpected discovery: a cardboard box brimming with letters and documents from the tumultuous years of 1938-1950. What a miracle they had been saved — and that I had never thrown them out!
I sorted the items chronologically and placed each in an archival sleeve. Trivia abounded; amidst the letters and government papers were hotel receipts and restaurant bills, car repair estimates and bank statements.
While at first much seemed useless, eventually the combined documents allowed me to recreate a detailed timeline and road map of my family’s escape from Frankfurt to Brussels through France and Spain, to Lisbon, England, Chile, Palestine, and New York.
Most of the letters were written in German, which my parents never taught me. Luckily, I found two women, both in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, who volunteered to painstakingly translate the letters. My grandparents learned to write before the 20th century, in Kurrentschrift, a style as foreign to contemporary Germans as Middle English is to us. Miraculously, I connected with an octogenarian near Frankfurt who was able to decipher what looked like gobbledygook to me. Those letters revealed a poignant piece of family history long hidden, and let me hear the voices of grand-
parents I never met.
My family’s riveting story held lessons about immigration and the dangers of hate, fascism, and propaganda. Your family story may or may not be as dramatic, but it is surely steeped in history and personal challenges and triumphs.
If you’re lucky enough to have a living older relative, take time to interview them, or at least write down bits of your own story to pass along. Make use of free genealogy websites and the National Archives. Look at census records and ship manifests. Explore newspaper articles of the period. You might just find it all as fascinating and gratifying as I have.
Bettie Lennett Denny is happy to attend meetings in the Portland area. Contact her at bettie.denny@gmail.com. Her previous books, written in retirement, include Burying My Dead and Angel Unfolding.