Piecing Scattered Souls

Maine, Germany, Mexico, China and Beyond

 

This book is a story about journeys, connections, and healing. It is a family chronicle discovering surprising links from around the world that form a matrix of stories. These reach from Dessau, Germany, to Monterey, Mexico, to Roma, Texas, to Braunschweig (Brunswick), Germany, and from there to Brunswick, Maine. From Brunswick, Maine, the links continue to Zurich, Switzerland, to Shantou and Shanghai, China, and back to Maine. This narrative, like so many stories of families is borderless regardless of race, ethnicity, cultural backgrounds, and creed. It becomes a journey to different places both figuratively and literally. It fosters the realization that we are one people huddled together on our small, fragile planet Earth.

This particular saga is seen through the eyes of the only child of Nazi Holocaust survivors. By writing in the third person, I find I become less of a narcissist, feel a little more humble, and am better able to see myself more clearly. By reflecting on the place of David, the son, in these stories, they become a healing process by allowing me to break through prejudice and misconceptions resulting in new and lasting friendships. In visiting my parents hometowns of Braunschweig and Hamburg, Schlossburg, a part of Munich where they lived following their marriage, and the Nazi concentrations camps especially at Dachau and Theresienstadt, I felt directly akin to them. Guided by the wisdom of those who came before, the bonds they made, and the understandings they proliferated, I intimately offer my insight of a continually evolving community through life, death, and rebirth.