K. Heidi Fishman's Blog, page 4

Captured Time

I received a delightful postcard from Europe yesterday. One of my primary sources is a woman who, like my mother, was also in Westerbork as a child. She had previously written and thanked me for sending her a copy of Tutti’s Promise. This time she was writing to tell me what she thought of it.

She wrote, in part,

“I want to let you know how much I enjoyed reading your book. As I am almost the same age as your mother, it brought vividly back many memories of that time, not only in what happened, but also in the general atmosphere. How did you catch that atmosphere? Only by what your mother told you about it?”

[image error]

Painting of the Strafbarracks in Westerbork by Leo Kok

This made me think. How had I captured the mood of that long-ago and far-off place that I didn’t experience for myself. I had my mother’s recollections, of the grayness and damp, the stacked bunks, the barbed wire. I had the accounts of others, such as the woman I mention earlier. I read multiple books and even attended a one-woman play by Joanna Caplan. I consulted the historical weather records. I visited Westerbork. I knew my grandparents, and, as a psychologist, I know people. So while I was guessing at how they may have reacted, I feel it is a well-educated guess.

My depiction is by no means perfect. One thing my mom has shared since the book was published was how loud it was in the camps, with the Jews arguing constantly about every little thing. I wish I had incorporated that detail. But memory itself is fluid and fleeting, and if my story, however imperfect, captures a vestige of the experiences of those at Westerbork and Theresienstadt, then I have succeeded and the lessons of Tutti’s Promise will ring true and deep for the reader.

[image error]

Barbed wire and base of guard tower at Westerbork (2014)

 

Filed under: Giving Thanks, Memory, Netherlands, Research, Theresienstadt, Westerbork, Writing Tagged: #Tuttispromise, Atmosphere, Barbed wire, Historical weather, Joanna Caplan

Five Years in Two Minutes

Four years spent researching and writing Tutti’s Promise
One year spent editing and preparing the book for publication
Two minutes to pitch it to the Jewish Book Council

Yesterday afternoon I left my house and took a plane to Westchester, NY. It was one of Cape Air’s cozy Cessna 402s with room for nine passengers and I was lucky enough to be seated in the copilot’s spot. No, I don’t know how to fly a plane. I was simply the shortest person on the flight and they needed someone who wouldn’t be cramped by the controls they weren’t supposed to touch.

[image error]           [image error]

I thoroughly enjoyed my front row seat. The flight was smooth as I watched out the window for familiar landmarks. The only time the flight was even slightly bouncy was the few seconds when the pilot took the controls off of autopilot.

From Westchester I took the Cape Air shuttle to my hotel in the East Village. A quick dinner of blintzes at a NYC landmark, Katz’s Deli, and then back to my hotel. I practiced my pitch several times and then tried to sleep.

[image error]    [image error]

How could I possibly sum up this journey in two minutes? All my research — hours on the internet searching through archives and genealogy websites; weeks at the USHMM in Washington, DC; trips to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Westerbork, Terezin, and Wickrath; tracking down survivors who might have known my mother or were on transport lists I wanted to publish; developing my website complete with discussion questions, testimonials, and reviews; and of course, this blog — PopjeAndMe. Did my two minutes do it justice? I finally fell asleep but was up before my alarm.

This morning I presented the pitch in front of a full house in the beautiful Hebrew Union College sanctuary.  I was number 16 out of approximately 45 authors. There were over 100 JCCs, temples, and other organizations represented by at least 200 people. The reps listened intently while scribbling notes. Soon they will decide which authors they want to invite to their various programs.

[image error]

The waiting was difficult. I tried to focus on everyone else and forget I would be up on the Bema soon. Watching numbers 13 through 15 was the worst for my anxiety, but I kept taking deep breaths and telling myself this audience was far more sympathetic than an auditorium of middle-schoolers, and that audience I had already conquered.

When it was my turn I stood tall, adjusted the mic, and proceeded to speak — on autopilot — occasionally checking my notes for familiar landmarks to keep me on track. And then it was over. I could swear my two minutes were shorter than everyone else’s. I hope I impressed a few people in the audience. Time will tell if I get some invitations to speak around the country. I’ll let you know if I’m coming to a town near you.

Here is the transcript of my pitch:

Good Morning

What’s your promise? What will you do to make the world a better place? Tutti’s Promise is about hope, perseverance, helping others, and resistance. I would love to talk to your community about these themes.

I’ll tell middle-school students about my family’s remarkable story to give them a better understanding of the Holocaust.

I’ll meet with adults to discuss the research behind the book – such as how I found out that my grandfather was helping to sabotage scrap metal and that Adolf Eichmann and the Minister of Armaments were arguing over his fate. Or how I learned what motivated a Theresienstadt guard to help my grandfather steal vegetables from the camp root cellar.

I wrote this story so it could be used to teach future generations, who won’t have the honor of meeting survivors like my mother. But Tutti’s Promise is so much more than a Holocaust story. It reminds the reader of the need for tolerance and acceptance. It reminds the reader of the importance of stepping up when they see discrimination. And it reminds all of us about the need to help and protect refugees.

My mother, Tutti, was five years old when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. Tutti’s Promise tells the story of how she and her family survived the occupation and two concentration camps, Westerbork and Thereisenstadt. The fact that three generations survived together when 75 percent of the Dutch Jews were murdered is unbelievable, and yet, it happened.

Stephen Smith, the Director of the Shoah Foundation, writes that “Tutti’s Promise is an engrossing story of hope, family, survival, and identity… inspiring the engaged reader to seek answers through a palpable emotional connection to the past.”

Thank you

Filed under: Blogging, public speaking, Research, Writing Tagged: autopilot, copilot, Hebrew Union College, Jewish Book Council, Jewish Book Festival, Jewish Community Center, Katz's Deli, Pubilishing, The Pitch, USHMM

Actions Speak Louder

[image error]

I went to two Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) events in April and I noticed that different communities handle this important day in different ways. Each has a different tone and audience but essentially accomplishes the same thing.

I watched University of New Haven students do a short performance of Pavel Friedmann’s poem Butterfly. I sat with a small Vermont Jewish Community while we watched a video of Elie Wiesel describing what it was like to go back to his home town of Sighet, Romania twenty years after the war. And I spoke with academics, other children of survivors, and survivors themselves.

What do all these events have in common? They all light candles in remembrance of the murdered. They all respect the solemnity of the day and talk about the need to remember the past so as to put an end to bigotry now and in the future.

I have been invited to speak at a Yom HaShoah event in 2018. I am wondering what I might add to the conversation one year from now. I might tell my mother’s story of surviving Westerbork and Theresienstadt. I might discuss my grandfather’s acts of resistance through the metal industry. I might talk about my drive to write Tutti’s Promise. Whatever I do say, I hope I will inspire individuals in that community to move forward through their day or week or lifetime with an attitude of not just tolerance, but acceptance. This is an awesome task I have ahead of me and I hope I will be able to do it justice.

This week I received a letter from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It isn’t personal. It is a form letter that I assume was mailed out to everyone on their mailing list. Here is the text of the letter:

Dear Ms. Fishman,

Each year, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, by congressional mandate, leads our nation in commemorating the victims of the Holocaust at Days of Remembrance activities around the country.

Since the Museum’s opening in 1993, every US president has participated in this commemoration, a testament to our government’s bipartisan commitment to Holocaust education and remembrance. President Trump continued this important tradition, joining his predecessors Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama in paying tribute to Holocaust survivors and victims. In the grandeur of the US Capitol Rotunda, the president affirmed the work of the Museum and strongly repudiated antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and hate in general.

These are the issues the Museum works on tirelessly every day thanks to your support. We reach millions of people worldwide through our multilingual website and educational activities that have a direct impact on how the lessons o the Holocaust are taught, learned, and acted upon.

Thank you for your steadfast commitment to our mission.

Sincerely,

Sara J. Bloomfield

Director

This is the first time I can remember getting such a letter. I can’t claim it is the first time the USHMM has sent a letter to this effect, but it is the first one I personally remember. The letter states that since 1993 the museum has been hosting Days of Remembrance activities and since 1993 every president has participated. That’s 24 years. Why is this the first [image error]year that I remember a letter pointing out that the current president participated? Is it because this is the first year since the USHMM was established that we have a president who embraces the opinions of a known white supremacist? Is it because this is the first president since 1993 whose campaign was at times filled with hatred and whose commitment to fighting bigotry is in question? I can’t help but wonder if the current administration requested, or more likely demanded, that the USHMM send out a letter noting that the president participated because they know he has a problem. His actions do not demonstrate that he is accepting of all people, nor do they show that he hates bigotry. In fact, he has actually seemed to promote it.

I certainly won’t be asking the community where I speak next year to send a follow up letter to everyone they know stating that Heidi Fishman repudiates antisemitism and bigotry. I don’t need to have anyone point out my words, because my actions speak for themselves.

Filed under: Acceptance, Connections, Education, Holocaust, Memory, Prejudice, Theresienstadt, Westerbork Tagged: anti-semitism, Bigotry, Elie Wiesel, Pavel Friedmann, Remembrance, Tutti's Promise, University of New Haven, USHMM, white supremacist, Yom HaShoah

Radio Broadcast

Today (Tuesday April 25, 2017) I will be a guest on Vermont Public Radio on Vermont Edition. It is a special program for Yom HaShoah. I encourage everyone to listen at noon, but if you only have a few minutes I should be entering the conversation at about 12:25.

Here is a link for people who aren’t in VT.

VPR – Vermont Edition

If you miss the broadcast at noon it will be repeated at 7pm tonight.

[image error]

Filed under: Education, Holocaust, Memory, Senseless violence, Testimony Tagged: Holocasut Education, Jane Lindholm, JCOGS, Tutti's Promise, Vermont Edition, VPR, Yom HaShoah

3…2….1…Launch!

I arrived at the Mandell JCC at 5pm with my husband. We brought all my books, posters, artifacts, etc. upstairs to the room where the launch was to take place in two hours. The room was hot. There were a lot of chairs. And I was nervous.

We met Kathy, the coordinator for Voices of Hope, and we all started scurrying around the room — there were tablecloths to set out, all my mother’s Holocaust artifacts to lay out safely, posters to display, and the computer with the PowerPoint to connect to the projector. Gregory, the JCC facilities magician, was calm and wonderful. He connected the computer, did the sound check, turned the air conditioning on, and straightened the long rows of chairs. His ability to help get the room in order definitely helped my nerves calm a bit. We even chatted about his coming to Hartford from Jamaica four years ago and how much he loves living in Connecticut.

[image error]Dave and I set up side tables with all my displays and then we waited. I tried to keep my anxiety at bay, but as it kept popping up I decided to run through my notes one more time. And then people started to show up. A good friend of my mother. A counselor from summer camp when I was ten. A babysitter from when I was eight. The parents of high school classmates. Former neighbors. My parents’ current neighbors. A high school English teacher. College classmates. My brothers and their families. People started buying books and asking me to sign them. And then it was time to start.

[image error]   [image error]

My brother introduced Voices of Hope and its mission. My mother gave a brief overview of her history. Then it was my turn. It was thrilling to stand in front of all those people. When I started talking the anxiety floated away. I told the stories of how Tutti’s Promise grew from a mere idea to a real book and how I met so many people along the way. I could have told the stories all night, because they are my stories. This was the adventure I had been living for five years and I hoped my excitement was contagious. When I was done speaking people lined up to buy more books and have my mother and I both sign them.

A few teachers in the audience asked me when I could come to their schools. I have already booked one. The evening was such a vote of confidence! Thank you everyone for your support.

Filed under: Connections, Giving Thanks, Holocaust Tagged: #Tuttispromise, Book Launch, Confidence, Mandell JCC, public speaking, Voices of Hope

First Publicity

Here’s the first newspaper article about Tutti’s Promise and my upcoming launch in West [image error]Hartford, CT. It appears in the Connecticut Jewish Ledger March 29, 2017.

Tutti’s Promise tells the story of the Holocaust through a child’s eyes

By Stacey Dresner

WEST HARTFORD – When K. Heidi Fishman was growing up in West Hartford her mother Ruth did not hide the fact that she was a Holocaust survivor from her kids.

“I feel like I always knew her story. I don’t remember the first time I heard it…I knew she had been through the war. She told me, however she told me. Little things would come up and if I asked a question, she would answer it. And then it was: ‘Next topic, what are we going to have for dinner?’ She didn’t dwell on it,” Fishman recalls. “I did not hear horrible Holocaust stories as a child. It just wasn’t done.”

If her family told any stories, she says, it was the “funny stories” like the one about her grandfather hiding stolen vegetables in his pants, nearly getting caught and having diarrhea. After which her grandmother took the soiled vegetables, washed them and served them to the starving family, because wasting any food in that situation would be unconscionable.

“So it was funny, but not funny. When you are told this as a 10- or a 12-year-old, it is pretty funny,” Fishman said. “When you hear it as an adult, it is tragic.”

In the early 1990s when Fishman’s mother began speaking at schools about her experiences as a child inmate at the Theresienstadt concenteration camp, Fishman heard her mother’s full story.

Five years ago when Ruth visited Fishman’s daughter’s 7th grade class to speak, her story resonated with Fishman differently than before.

“It hit me as a mother watching my child listen to it. I was hearing it as a parent. [I thought] How would the parent take care of the child in that situation? I was seeing it through my grandmother’s eyes. So I was watching my daughter and her friends and how they listened to my mom and they were just spellbound… I said, ‘Ok, this has got to be written down.’”

Fishman has written it down and her book, Tutti’s Promise, about her family’s experiences during the Holocaust, will be launched on Monday, April 3 at the Mandell JCC as part of its JCC Book Festival.

Co-sponsoring the event is CT Voices of Hope, the Holocaust education organization of which Fishman’s brother, Peter Fishman is president.

“We both just sort of got interested in [the Holocaust] at the same time and did it in different ways. His interest was to start with fundraising and to help teach other people and to teach children about the Holocaust,” she says. “My way was writing a book about it.”

Fishman’s mother was born Ruth Lichtenstern in 1935 in Germany. Her nickname was Tutti. In 1936, Tutti and her parents, Heinz and Margret, left Germany for Amsterdam.

“They saw the writing on the wall,” Fishman explained. “And the company my father worked for moved the main office from Cologne to Amsterdam. It was a Jewish company and my grandfather went with the move.”

The Lichtensterns’ life in Amsterdam was good for a couple of years – Tutti’s younger brother Robbie was born there in 1938. Then in 1940, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands.

Things were okay for the Lichtensterns for a time.

“It started out normal even though the Germans were there. They way the Nazis invaded the Netherlands was that they made their changes really slow,” Fishman said. “It wasn’t like a Kristallnacht where they just came in and started knocking down all of the synagogues and arresting people. It was slow, insidious changes. Little things. ‘Register your bike, register your car. Now you can’t have your car. Now you can’t have your bike.’ It was little things like that and it slowly crept up on them.”

Fishman’s grandfather worked as a metals commodities trader.

“The Nazis wanted him to stay in his job. Until October 1943, it was useful for him to be working,” Fishman said. “At the same time, he didn’t want to be helping [the Germans].”

The family was sent twice to Westerbork, a transit camp in the Netherlands, the first time in October 1943.

That November they were released with two other families that were also involved in the metals trade. When doing research for the book, Heidi found documents between the office of Adolf Eichmann – the architect of the Final Solution and the department of Armament and Munitions, which needed metal for the war effort.

“These two top very important departments of the Nazis’ machine are arguing what to do with seven – what they called – ‘metal Jews.’ And my grandfather was one of them. So the munitions people are saying let them go we need them so they were let go in November. But then by February, Eichmann’s office gets the upper hand and says, ‘No, they are going back in, we are arresting them. We have gotten rid of all of the Jews in the Netherlands, we want them too.’”

Despite the scrap metal work they were doing – and sabotaging whenever they got the chance – Heinz, Margret, Tutti and Robbie were sent to Theresienstadt in September of 1944. But her father was still valuable due to his connections with the metals industry.

“In Theresienstadt they were no longer living as a family unit. It was my grandmother with the two children and then the men were in a separate barracks. Both sets of my mother’s grandparents were in Theresienstadt as well.”

Tutti’s Promise shares the stories of Tutti’s time in both Westerbork and Theresienstadt. She has memories of regular everyday things – playing with other children, a special doll, childhood crushes, and less pleasant memories, like the hunger.

“My mom’s memories are really child memories. She saw it through a child’s eyes. Her mother…my grandmother is my hero in this. She protected the kids so much,” Fishman said.

After the war, Tutti, now known as Ruth to many in the community, settled in West Hartford – her husband Herbert’s hometown – to raise Heidi and her brothers, Peter and Toni.

Heidi, who attended Renbrook School and Loomis Chaffee, became a psychologist in private practice before she decided to become an author.

Tutti was her main source when writing the book.

“The number of emails back and forth and phone calls back and forth…just looking for details,” said Fishman, who now lives in Vermont with her family. “There were lots of documents, lots of archival stuff and I met with people who knew more stuff, like in the Netherlands there is a digital monument to the Jews called ‘Joods Monument.nl,’ and it lists the 104,000 Jews that were murdered during the war, what happened to them…pictures, last residence, family connections, it’s amazing. And I met different people who knew different bits of the story. I tracked down the family members of the seven ‘metal Jews’ to try to find out what they knew about their grandfather or uncle.”

While searching the Dutch Holocaust website, Fishman even found a history professor working on his own book, who was able to fill her and her family in on how her own Uncle Bobby had tried to escape to London with a friend, but was captured and sent to Auschwitz.

In the book, Tutti makes two big promises, which will not be given away here. Fishman wants middle-schoolers to read about the promises on their own.

“I want middle school social studies teachers to pick it up and use it. Because I think it really teaches the Holocaust. You start from a family where everything was fine and then an invasion and how their life changes, and you get all these steps along the way,” Fishman said.

On the website, she has included discussion questions for each chapter “so teachers can have that right there and ready to go…I want it all to be there. If they want to teach the Holocaust, it is all there.”

But she adds that the book is also appropriate for adults.

“I intended it for middle school when I was writing it. That was my audience. And as friends started to read drafts, they said, ‘What do you mean middle school – I love this!’ Every adult I know who has read it says it is not a kid’s book. Kids can definitely understand it, but this is an absolutely great read for adults too. It’s an everybody book.”

Fishman won the 2015 Joseph Zola Memorial Holocaust Educator Award from the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford for Tutti’s Promise’s book proposal.

Avinoam Patt, professor of Modern Jewish History at the Greenberg Center and director of its Museum of Jewish Civilization, reviewed the book, calling it “a compelling story for all readers about one family’s remarkable tale of survival during the Holocaust. K. Heidi Fishman does a masterful job of weaving together Holocaust history with the account of Tutti and her family… The book fills an important gap in the available literature on the subject…”

Fishman said that message of Tutti’s Promise is one of acceptance.

“The message is that people have to stop being prejudiced against each other because of some arbitrary label, color, religion, whether you can walk, or you have trouble breathing. None of that matters. We are all human beings. We have to get along. And when we start labeling other people as ‘them’ we have a problem. I want people to stop seeing the ‘thems’ – because this is what it leads to.”

To see original article click here: Jewish Ledger

Filed under: Avi Patt, Holocaust, Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies, Memory, Nazi, Netherlands, Prejudice, Testimony, Theresienstadt, Writing Tagged: Book Launch, Holocaust Education, Mandell JCC, Tutti's Promise, Voices of Hope

A Teacher, a Student, and a Lesson Plan

A few weeks ago my husband handed me a book. He told me I should read it before I finished writing all the discussion questions for Tutti’s Promise. He has been working in schools his entire professional life and knows something about education.

The title is Understanding by Design and it is written by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. I paged through a little of the book but kept looking back at the cover. Grant Wiggins. “I had a teacher named Grant Wiggins in high school,” I told my husband.

My mind floated back to some very specific memories:

Grant teaching a philosophy class. He was one of the few teachers that went by his first name in the late 70s at Loomis-Chaffee. Grant was late. About 5 minutes into class he came in and sat silently at the big table with us. We had been chatting with our friends but quieted down waiting for class to start. Grant just sat. He didn’t say a word. We sat and waited. We had been reading about Socrates and one particularly brilliant classmate spoke up and said something like “I think we’re supposed to talk about the homework reading.” Another classmate looked at Grant and asked him if we were supposed to talk about the homework. Grant just sat. After a few more minutes we started talking about the homework. One by one the entire class became involved in a lively discussion of the reading we had done the night before. We posed our own questions. We pondered answers. We probed and challenged and enjoyed learning something entirely on our own without a teacher’s input. Because Grant just sat. At the end of class he got up and left the room. It was one of the most memorable and best classes I had that year.

Grant was in a faculty band. Rabbit Creek. They would play in the quad on spring weekends. Grant played guitar and sang. I remember dancing in the quad with my friends and enjoying a spring evening.

Grant died a couple of years ago. He had a heart attack and his death shocked many Loomis- Chaffee alumni.

I flipped through the book some more…. Understanding by Design is an approach to curriculum creation that emphasizes more than knowledge. Its goal is for students to truly understand the subject and the basic approach is to plan in reverse. First decide what you want your students to take away from the lesson, then build the activities and questions around that goal. Makes sense to me.

My discussion questions for Tutti’s Promise are now on my website.

Filed under: Connections, Education, Memory Tagged: #Tuttispromise, Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, Loomis, Loomis-Chaffee, Rabbit Creek, Socrates, Understanding by Design

Soft Launch

Last week I was so excited when I finally received a package with advance copies of Tutti’s Promise. After working on the book for five years I was finally holding it in my hand. I videoed  myself while I opened the package to catch my own reaction and posted the video on my personal Facebook page.

Then something unexpected happened – it went viral. Well, not really viral. More like a bad cold. According to Facebook, in 24 hours the video had been viewed over a thousand times. That inspired me to share the video on my author page and with some of the Holocaust related groups that I belong to.

That led to another unintended event. People started to buy Tutti’s Promise. In the video I clearly state that the book will be released on April 24. However, because of the way Amazon and CreateSpace work, my publisher had to put the book up early so we could get the advance hard copies we needed for my launch party and the Jewish Book Council. People are smart, they looked on Amazon and found it, and it started to sell.

Last week Tutti’s Promise was listed as the first book under the heading “Hot new releases” in the Children’s Holocaust Fiction category.  Needless to say, I am thrilled!

[image error]

This is considered a soft launch with the official launch coming late in April. Feel free to take advantage of this news. And if you like what you read, please post a review on Amazon.* I would love to know what you think of the book!

*Amazon has some rules against close friends and family members posting reviews.

 

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: #Tuttispromise, Createspace, Jewish Book Council, MB Publishing, Publishing, soft launch, viral

Tutti’s Promise is here!

 

 

Filed under: Amsterdam, Avi Patt, Connections, Displaced Persons, Education, Giving Thanks, Holocaust, Memory, Nazi, Netherlands, Prejudice, Research, Revision, Senseless violence, Testimony, Theresienstadt, Westerbork, Writing Tagged: History, Publishing, Reading, Thanks, writing

The Hotel Bristol – Berlin

Hotel Bristol Berlin Tea Hall Vintage Postcard*

 

Tutti’s Promise contains a scene in which a concentration camp guard lets my grandfather smuggle vegetables out of a root cellar to his wife and children. This really happened and my mother remembers it well. She has told me that my grandfather even said that he would have testified for leniency for this particular guard if he had ever had the chance. What my mother never knew, however, was why this Nazi had helped her father. What was his motivation? I had to fabricate it for the novel.

A few weeks ago, over a cup of tea at the Hotel Frambach in Wickrath, I found out the back story and had to rewrite the chapter. While visiting Germany with my mother we met up with one of her old friends. They reminisced and told many old stories while we sipped tea at a little restaurant in the small village where my grandmother had grown up.

This is what my mother’s friend told us:

My grandfather was an international businessman. He traded in metals his entire professional life, and this meant many business trips throughout the world. In the 1930s, when he lived in Cologne, Germany, one of his frequent destinations was Berlin, where he stayed in one of the best hotels — The Bristol.

Being proper and knowing that a little something extra gets you good service, he would always tip the staff well, especially one particular head waiter. My assumption is that those gratuities prompted the maître d’ to seat him at a good table and offer him a free appetizer or drink once in a while.

But those tips got him more than good service at the best hotel in Berlin. They may have saved his life —  it gave his family life-sustaining nourishment when they were starving! My mother’s friend told us that the Nazi who guarded the root cellar was none other than the head waiter from the Hotel Bristol!

 Be nice to people on your way up because you’ll meet them on your way down.

— Wilson Mizner.

*At the time of this posting the postcard can be found for sale at ebay.

 

 

Filed under: Connections, Hunger, Memory, Nazi, Theresienstadt Tagged: Berlin, Gratuity, History, Hotel Bristol, Hotel Frambach, Wickrath