Survivor Story: Bullets and Bread

“My mother and 5,000 others worked 12-hour shifts, night or day, seven days a week, making bullet casings. They were fed 600 calories a day. A Polish worker who went home at night sometimes smuggled in flour which my mother, risking her life, used to bake bread on the hot machinery. That extra bread was the difference between life and death.” Read about two Holocaust survivors, German Jewish newlyweds sent to America by their parents to have children to “save our people,” in One Person’s Loss. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.

Jewish and non-Jewish workers made bullets for the German army
Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter

Me and Elizabeth Strout

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout is due out on September 20, 2022, the same day that my new book One Person’s Loss will be published. Strout’s previous novel, Oh, William! was released on October 19, 2021, the same day as my last book, The Great Stork Derby! A recent New York Times “What to Read” profile says that the 66-year-old Strout has hit her stride and is on a roll. Ditto the 75-year-old Ann S. Epstein!

Novelist Ann S. Epstein
Novelist Elizabeth Strout

Survivor Story: Passing

“We had little to eat. Since I was blonde with a light complexion, I could pass as a non-Jewish Pole and smuggle food to my family in the ghetto. The police often stopped me and confiscated the food I was carrying. Once, a guard tried to force me to admit I was Jewish and ordered a German Shepherd to attack me. Even when the dog bit off pieces of my flesh, I insisted I wasn’t Jewish. I still bear the scars.” Read about two Holocaust survivors, German Jewish newlyweds sent to America by their parents to have children to “save our people,” in One Person’s Loss. Learn more about the book in NOVELS.

German guard dogs viciously attacked Jews while SS officers laughed
Berlin, 1937. Jewish newlyweds flee Germany for Brooklyn on the eve of the Nazi slaughter