While cleaning out her mother’s closet a few years ago, Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg, a professor of biology at UMBC, discovered a worn brown cardboard box covered with German writing and filled with wartime letters. Most of the letters were dated between 1938 and 1941 – after her mother had left Germany and come to the United States. Now, thanks to Rebecca Boehling and Uta Larkey, an associate professor of German studies at Goucher College, this extraordinary family story comes to life in a new book: Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust
Rebecca Boehling and Uta Larkey reveal how the Kaufmann-Steinberg family was pulled apart under the Nazi regime and left divided between Germany, the US and Palestine. The family's unique eight-way correspondence across two generations brings into sharp focus the dilemma of Jews in Nazi Germany facing the painful decision of when and if they should leave Germany. The authors capture the family members' fluctuating emotions of hope, optimism, resignation and despair as well as the day-to-day concerns, experiences and dynamics of family life despite increasing persecution and impending deportation. Headed by two sisters who were among the first female business owners in Essen, the family was far from conventional, and their story contributes a new dimension to our understanding of life in Germany during these dark years.
