A Farewell Waltz

When an old file folder of letters from 1933-1942 is discovered by the author he is taken on a journey into his family's past. In the process he uncovers one thousand years of Jewish history in German lands and begins to understand the tragedy which enveloped his family. His mother and grandmother were sentenced by Nazi special courts. This well documented story shows how financial death was to be followed by physical death. It takes the reader from Jewish emancipation in 1871 to imprisonment in the 1930's followed by shipment to a French concentration camp in Gurs. It follows the family from the Belle Epoch in Baden-Baden, Germany to the misery in the women's penitentiary in Aichach. In order to escape, two women had to overcome both the Nazi as well as the American bureaucracy. All who have read this have been moved by the story which illuminates the holocaust in a very intimate and personal way. The title is derived from a song in a movie about Chopin which was the last movie that one of the women saw in Germany titled "Der Abschiedswalzer". The farewell waltz was not only the last movie but depicts the many moves that were taken by the authorities and the individuals involved.