On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I joined fellow author Lisa Leff in Providence, RI for a program entitled Reactions to the Holocaust: Journey for Justice.
The audience was fascinated by our respective stories and one man came up to me at the end of my presentation and told me he was convinced his parents had bought a fur hat from the H. Wolff fur company!
It is six weeks since I spoke at the JCC in Detroit. Today I received this email from someone I met at the event:
I was thrilled to read your book, both from the perspective of a journalist and lawyer and as the child of German Jews (on both sides). Your ability to weave together the story of your claim for restitution as well as the investigation of what happened to your family members in a manner that is both delicate and personal as well as passionate and adversarial was thrilling. My grandfather was a restitution lawyer for victims of the Holocaust in Detroit after the war, having had to flee a very successful career in Berlin as a lawyer and working in a paper box factory until retirement. He wasn’t alive to see us secure restitution of his business buildings near the Brandenberg Gate after the Berlin Wall came down, but the process was similar, though not nearly as harrowing as yours was — the stakes were much higher in your case! Thanks again for the gift of this book. It is a treasure.
Joanna Stark Abramson
I am sure I am not alone as an author to delight in receiving such positive feedback from a reader.
Great to meet all the friendly members who came to hear me talk about the book. Always interesting to hear of other families’ attempts to reclaim their lost properties and the struggles they have endured.
One lady told me that, at the end of the Second World War, she had embarked on a twenty year long legal battle in West Germany to get restitution of buildings owned by her father. Someone else told me that his family had once had properties in Poland, but had long ago given up any hope of ever possessing them again.
At the Press Club’s 38th Annual Book Fair and Authors’ Night. A great turnout and wonderful to meet so many interested readers. People stopped by my table to ask lots of questions and were genuinely keen to know more about the story.
Speaking at the 64th Annual Jewish Book Fair on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
The event was held in the Janice Charach Gallery of the magnificent building of the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit.
Lovely to see a packed audience and to meet so many people with such amazing, and often tragic, stories to tell.