On my father’s 80th birthday, my uncle presented him with a gift: a book containing the correspondence between their parents, Hermann and Käthe, in the aftermath of Hermann’s arrest by the Gestapo in 1943. I had known about Hermann’s death in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp from an early age, but this lovingly annotated, self-published volume opened a window onto my grandparents’ love story – and their courage. It also contained a musical clue: a reference in a letter Hermann wrote from Buchenwald to a classical-music broadcast on the radio that would become a telepathic rendez-vous between him and Käthe. The letter sent me diving deep into the family archive of shoeboxes crammed with photos, letters and mementos that tell the story of two people who exemplified the freewheeling, cosmopolitan Twenties like few others and who in the face of destruction and fear held onto poetry and music in order to stay true to themselves and each other.

I’ve shared some of their story with audiences at the Fuhlsbüttel Prison Memorial in Hamburg, the Agudas Achim Congregation in Virginia and the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign’s Initative in Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies. Please use the contact form if you are interested in bringing a talk to your school or institution.