Books
A memorial to my family's endurance
We are still waiting for what was stolen from us
April 21, 2016 15:22
By
Karen Millie-James
1 min read
We are still waiting for what was stolen from us
April 21, 2016 15:22By
Karen Millie-James
My first novel, The Shadows Behind Her Smile, has recently been published. I'm not a novelist but a successful businesswoman and, like others of my age, I am among the first generation of Jews who were not forced to survive against oppression and prejudice.
My father arrived with the Kindertransport from Charlottenberg in Germany via Sweden, in 1939 at the age of 12. All he had to his name was a small cardboard box containing a few meagre belongings and a couple of treasured family photos. He had a card slung around his neck, on which his name, Rudi Cohn, was hand-written.
He knew nobody and could hardly speak English. He left everything and everyone else behind: his parents, grandparents, twin brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, not knowing whether he would ever see them again. His family were wealthy bankers.
For almost 10 years after the war, he fought with the German authorities for restitution for all he had lost. In 1963, he received the princely sum of £1,300. That was the total price of his lost heritage. What about the house, and the business?
Fifteen years ago or thereabouts, I read that the German authorities were open to requests for further restitution and so it began again. I applied to the courts of Frankfurt and had to attend the German Embassy to sign an affidavit on behalf of my family as the oldest living relative, my mother already succumbing to dementia. Nothing else has materialised. We wait to this day.
We are still waiting for what was stolen from us
Speaking of this is not to complain but to reinforce that we have come out of the horrors of the Holocaust and we are living proof that, despite everything, we have made successes of our lives. My father died at the age of 39. He fought for everything he had but what he gave me and my brothers and sister was more than money; it was an understanding of being a Jew and taking this belief forward into the generations. We are all products of our parents' survival. Now my journey as an author has begun. Writing a book for the first time, one not only reaches into the depths of the characters you are portraying and how they react to circumstances into which you place them as an author, but you reach an understanding of yourself and how your life has moulded you into the person you are today.
'The Shadows Behind Her Smile' is available to download from Amazon
To get more from Life, click here to sign up for our free Life newsletter.