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Saturday 7 May 2011

Tied With An Easy Thread

There are many books of children who were abandoned, people escaping from Nazi persecution, coping with poverty, prejudice, and loss. There are not so many that end with a large inheritance, followed by an amazing discovery ten years after the subject's death. Rarely do you find all these in the true chronicle of one woman's life.

When she was four years old in 1917, Ruth's German mother abandoned her and her brother in a Christian children's home in Dresden. When her Jewish father came there to reclaim his children two years later, Ruth was influenced by the matron to reject him. She never saw him again. At fourteen she left the children's home to become a Haustochter, and spent the next eleven years in various domestic posts. Despised as a half Jew, she escaped from Nazi Germany just eight weeks before the beginning of WWII, to become a refugee in England.

This book, written by her daughter, chronicles Ruth's life in Germany, England and Wales. Struggling against poverty all her life, her fortune was dramatically changed by a very large inheritance from a totally unexpected source when she was eighty two.

Throughout her life she regretted her rejection of her father, and expressed a desire to know what had become of him. This led to her daughter's ten year search, a DNA test, and an astonishing discovery.

In a recent edition of "Look up your Genes" on BBC Radio Wales, the presenter described this as '... a story that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.' Kristina Taylor wants the story to be read and passed on so that new generations can hear Ruth's testament of events in the twentieth century that affected her so deeply, and impacted on the next generations of her family.

The book is published by Authors on Line.

3 comments:

  1. Featured in a Jewish Chronicle article by Anthea Gerrie Friday 3rd June 2011

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  2. http://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-features/49871/a-family-reunited-after-90-years

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  3. Thank you for that link. Really helps people to see more of the story.

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