Fern Schumer Chapman's Blog, page 25
January 18, 2018
Junior Library Guild selects THREE STARS IN THE NIGHT SKY for fall list 2018
At the age of 12, Gerda Katz fled Nazi Germany and came to America all by herself. Decades before the label gained recognition, she became what’s now known as an “unaccompanied minor.” Gerda’s story of family separation reflects the dislocating trauma, culture shock, and excruciating loneliness many unaccompanied minor immigrants experience. As Gerda becomes an American, she never stops longing to be reunited with her family. Three Stars in the Night Sky illuminates the personal damage of racism in three countries – Nazi Germany, the Dominican Republic, and the United States during the 1930s and 40s — and the emotional devastation of a child coming to a new country alone.
Book will be released in June 2018!
Junior Library Guild selects THREE STARS IN THE NIGHT SKY for spring list
At the age of 12, Gerda Katz fled Nazi Germany and came to America all by herself. Decades before the label gained recognition, she became what’s now known as an “unaccompanied minor.” Gerda’s story of family separation reflects the dislocating trauma, culture shock, and excruciating loneliness many unaccompanied minor immigrants experience. As Gerda becomes an American, she never stops longing to be reunited with her family. Three Stars in the Night Sky illuminates the personal damage of racism in three countries – Nazi Germany, the Dominican Republic, and the United States during the 1930s and 40s — and the emotional devastation of a child coming to a new country alone.
Book will be released in June 2018!
January 12, 2018
January 9, 2018
January 6, 2018
October 24, 2017
Jewish Book Council reviews STUMBLING ON HISTORY
Fern Schumer Chapman
Gussie Rose Press 2016
54 Pages $17.99
ISBN: 978-0996472517
Review by Teri Markson
This slender book is both a memory and a memorial, a tribute and a warning, a look at what is and what was.
Author Fern Schumer Chapman first recounts the experience of her German born mother, 89-year-old Edith Westerfeld, whose parents sent her at age twelve to live with family in Chicago when the Nazi threat to the Jews was mounting. In spite of the Westerfelds having lived in Stockstadt am Rhein for nearly 250 years, Edith’s parents were forced from their home and sent to concentration camps where they perished.
The remainder of the book is dedicated to describing the Stumbling Stones project and the installation ceremony at the site of Edith’s childhood home. Begun in 1996, Stumbling Stones was designed by German activist Gunther Demnig to memorialize individual victims of the Holocaust, and create a visual and tactile link to the places where they had lived. In place of cobblestones, Demnig and his team have placed tens of thousands of bronze markers on walkways in front of homes and buildings throughout Europe, each embossed with a victim’s name, birthdate and fate.
In November 2014, Edith and Fern returned to Stockstadt am Rhein to witness the placement of five markers, one each for Edith’s grandmother, mother, father, sister and herself. It is the personal nature of their experience that provides the gateway to this piece of world history, and to a discussion of the need to remember and atone in order not to repeat horrendous events of the past.
For the most part, the text avoids sentimentality and preachiness; historical photographs provide visual context, while pictures of the event make the experience relatable, driving home the message that what happened in Stockstadt am Rhein happened to real people, and that each stumbling stone is an individual.
Recommended for ages 9 and up.
September 30, 2017
In Memoriam – Gerda Katz Frumkin
In Memoriam
Gerda Katz Frumkin
Dec. 4, 1925 – Sept. 22, 2017
We are mourning the loss of Gerda Katz Frumkin, my mother’s childhood friend. After becoming best friends on the ship from Nazi Germany to America, Edith (my mother) and Gerda lost touch with each other in 1938. In 2011, eighth graders reunited the two old friends, 73 years after they last saw each other. Like Finding My Twin tells the story of Gerda and Edith’s friendship and reunion. Here is the eulogy I delivered at her funeral in Seattle last Monday:
My name is Fern Schumer Chapman. I am a dear friend of Gerda’s daughter, Ann Sherman, and I am the daughter of Gerda’s close friend, Edith Schumer.
Gerda and Edith’s remarkable friendship spans two countries and eight decades. The two came to this country on a little-known American program that rescued children from Nazi-occupied countries. Terrified and alone, they traveled all by themselves when they were only 12 years old. The two girls met on the ship and forged a deep bond during the rough 10-day passage in March of 1938. Gerda was seasick and Edith took care of her, refusing to leave her side. But sadly, they lost touch with each other when they parted in New York City.
For decades, my mother yearned to see her old friend. I had tried to find her, but there were several women with that name and we weren’t convinced any were my mother’s friend. We thought Gerda might have gotten married, and we didn’t know her new name.
In an incredible turn of events, after reading about Gerda and Edith’s friendship in a book I wrote, compassionate 8th graders reunited the two women 73 years after their shared immigration journey. What those children did for Gerda and Edith — who were in their 80s at the time — was immeasurable.
The first time Gerda and Edith “talked” on the phone in 2011, just a few weeks before they would meet in person, they said hello and then, for twenty minutes, they sobbed together. No words were necessary. Each felt the other was the only person who understood their deep uprooting and unbearable losses.
The Nazis murdered my mother’s parents and many family members. Some of Gerda’s loved ones perished, too. Thankfully, most of her family survived, though she was separated from them for 30 years.
During their dramatic reunion in Seattle, my mother told Gerda, “I wish we could have been in touch. I think we could have helped each other.”
After the reunion, when my mother and I were flying home to Chicago, I asked her, “Why was it so important to see Gerda again?” She said, “I knew she had suffered as I have. Seeing her was like looking in the mirror. It was like finding my twin.”
Gerda and Edith were historical twins.
When the two resumed their friendship six years ago, they did “help” each other. They often talked on the phone — sometimes twice a week. They never seemed to run out of things to say, and they could feel each other’s moods simply by listening carefully.
Gerda had never spoken of her traumatic childhood and her history. My mother encouraged Gerda and gave her the confidence to tell her story to her friends, children, and grandchildren. Gerda gave Edith unconditional love and understanding. As my mother said many times, “seeing Gerda was like seeing my parents again.”
Finally, my mother found some peace.
Before they would end their phone conversations, the two old friends had a ritual.
Edith would tell Gerda, “You are my sister.”
And Gerda would whisper into the receiver, “And you are my sister.”
My mom wishes she could be with Gerda’s family today, but she said it would be too painful for her. Gerda was not coherent for the last days of her life, but when she had a moment of lucidity, she told Ann, “Tell Edie I love her.”
Gerda and Edith have modeled true friendship. They spoke in German and English. They giggled like schoolgirls. They shared the ups and downs of their lives. They fretted about politics and world affairs. They cried together about the weight of their shared history.
Most of all, they stepped into each other’s lives and filled in the holes.
Now… Ann and I will do the same for each other.
September 29, 2017
Association of Jewish Libraries reviews STUMBLING
In The Spotlight
Chapman, Fern Schumer. Stumbling on History: An Art Project Compels a Small German Town to Face its Past. Lake Bluff, IL: Gussie Rose Press, 2016. (Now available from Kar-Ben Publishers) 56 pp. $17.99. (9780996472517). PBK. Gr. 6-12. Reviewed from ARC.
The central story of this illustrated non-fiction book is about unique public art project honoring individual Holocaust victims. It explains one way modern Germans are recognizing and atoning for their country’s involvement in the Holocaust. All over Germany and other European countries, Stolpersteine – German for “Stumbling Stones” – small bronze plaques set in sidewalks near homes of displaced and murdered Holocaust victims “confront Germans with their past sins and their communities’ involvement in this horrific historical event.” When the author’s mother, Edith Westerfeld, was 12 years old, she was sent alone from Nazi Germany to America on a ship, in 1938. Now, the 89-year-old Holocaust refugee returns to her birthplace in Stockstadt am Rhein to be honored in a ceremony to place a Stumbling Stone in front of her childhood home. Westerfeld wonders if the memory of the Nazis murdering her parents, along with millions of other victims, will outlive the survivors.
An attractive layout of text, photographs, historical primary sources, extensive excerpts from the public record, and artifacts, documents the details of Edith’s past, the Stumbling Stones public art project, and the ceremony recognizing the part this German town played in the Holocaust. End matter includes credits for the 46 photos and a list of nations’ crimes, such as use of chemical warfare, religious intolerance, displacement of native peoples, etc., and a list of how some countries have taken responsibility for terrible acts in their past. Front and back inside covers display over 100 Stumbling Stones. A Readers’ Guide is available on the Kar-Ben website. Chapters include Memory, Recognition, Atonement, and an Afterword, with questions and activities following each section. Use Chapman’s three other titles – Motherland for adults and Is It Night or Day? and Like Finding My Twin for middle school grades – for a compelling congregational or community read.
Debbie Colodny, Cook Memorial Public Library District, Libertyville, IL. Former owner Sefer, So Good, and former member Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee.
August 24, 2017
Junior Library Guild’s August title: STUMBLING ON HISTORY
Stumbling On History is now available through the Junior Library Guild!
May 27, 2017
New Review of STUMBLING ON HISTORY
Book Review: Stumbling on History by Fern Schumer Chapman
This is an interesting book about an art project of Stumbling Stones to help mark the lives Holocaust victims in more than 1,000 cities throughout Germany, France, Denmark, Poland, Italy, and Austria. Each Stumbling Stone cost about $133 each. It focuses on the story of Edith Westerfield, a Holocaust survivor and what she and her family endured during the Holocaust. It is written by her daughter Fern.
I really enjoyed reading how an art project has helped to create some healing to victims of the Holocaust.
I connected well with a part in this book about what Edith endured as a Jewish child in her class, with sitting alone in the corner, and being sort of bullied (or mocked) by her classmates and teacher (for me mostly the teachers). I endured that kind of thing in congregation life when I was going through one of the hardest times in my life.
I loved reading about the apologies that were offered to the Schumer’s for what their family and other Jewish people went through, in which were extended through people from Germany and also some Christian people.
This is a book I can pick up again and again and find something deeper each time. It has helped me to realize that there were so many levels of hurt associated with the Holocaust, at so many different places around the world.
My review= 5 out of 5 stars
