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During the German occupation of the Netherlands, 1940 to 1945, all Jews were ordered to register the religion of their grandparents. The Reichskommissar appointed the young lawyer Hans Calmeyer to adjudicate "doubtful cases." Calmeyer used his assignment to save at least 3,700 Jews from deportation and death, dwarfing the number saved by Schindler's famous rescue operation. Laureen Nussbaum—née Hannelore Klein—owes her life to this brave German official. In Shedding Our Stars, she tells how Calmeyer declared her mother non-Jewish and deleted her and her family from the deportation lists, saving them from death. She goes on to interweave his story with her family's tale of survival, as well as with that of her boyfriend and, later, husband, Rudi Nussbaum. Since in Amsterdam the Kleins were close to the Franks, Anne Frank and her family also figure in book. Going beyond the liberation of the Netherlands to follow both Calmeyer's and the author's story to the end of their lives, Shedding Our Stars is a story of courage in the darkest of times, and of the resilience of the human spirit.
During the German occupation of the Netherlands, 1940 to 1945, all Jews were ordered to register the religion of their grandparents. The Reichskommissar appointed the young lawyer Hans Calmeyer to adjudicate "doubtful cases." Calmeyer used his assignment to save at least 3,700 Jews from deportation and death, dwarfing the number saved by Schindler's famous rescue operation. Laureen Nussbaum—née Hannelore Klein—owes her life to this brave German official. In Shedding Our Stars, she tells how Calmeyer declared her mother non-Jewish and deleted her and her family from the deportation lists, saving them from death. She goes on to interweave his story with her family's tale of survival, as well as with that of her boyfriend and, later, husband, Rudi Nussbaum. Since in Amsterdam the Kleins were close to the Franks, Anne Frank and her family also figure in book. Going beyond the liberation of the Netherlands to follow both Calmeyer's and the author's story to the end of their lives, Shedding Our Stars is a story of courage in the darkest of times, and of the resilience of the human spirit.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
About the Author-
Born in 1927 in Frankfurt, Laureen Nussbaum was the middle daughter of the Klein family. When she was eight, the Kleins left Hitler's Germany and settled in Amsterdam, close to Anne Frank and her family, old friends from Frankfurt. When Hans Calmeyer, the German official in charge of "dubious cases," decided in favor of their petition to be considered non-Jews, and Nussbaum's mother and sisters were allowed to shed their yellow stars, her father, living in a "privileged mixed marriage," was not deported. In 1957, Nussbaum and her husband, Rudi, moved to the United States and eventually, settled in Portland, OR, where Rudi joined the faculty of Portland State University (PSU). There, Nussbaum went back to school and subsequently got her PhD in German Language and Literature at the University of Washington. She joined the faculty of PSU, published dozens of academic papers, and eventually retired as a full professor. In 2012, after her husband's death, she moved to Seattle.
Reviews-
Debut author Nussbaum, with Kirtley (co-author: Alma Ros�, 2000), considers the work of a German lawyer who helped Jewish people escape the Holocaust in this mix of biography and memoir.Hans Calmeyer may not be a household name like Oskar Schindler, but through his work as a lawyer in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, he was able to save several thousand people from concentration camps. The Nazis ordered all Jewish people to register their grandparents' religion, and Calmeyer--whose job was to interpret German registration laws in the Netherlands and decide who'd be considered Jewish, half-Jewish, or "Aryan"--used considerable discretion to label as many people Aryan as possible. These fortunate ones included the author and her parents, whose new, "Aryanized" designation allowed them to live out the war in their Amsterdam home--even as their friends and neighbors, including Anne Frank and her family, were forced to go into hiding. With this book, the authors seek to tell the story of the little-known Calmeyer, whose early career included involvement with a student militia during Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch, which transformed his political views. They interweave his story with that of Nussbaum's family and of her future husband, Rudi Nussbaum, before, during, and especially after the war, when the extent of the Holocaust became clear. A group portrait emerges of ordinary people attempting to survive however they could and of small decisions that reverberated for decades to come. The prose is crisp and full of wonderful, small details: "Since my mother had been part of the Wanderv�gel (birds of passage) movement as a teenager in Vienna, she was quite progressive with regard to girls and boys going on weekend hikes together in the countryside." Calmeyer comes across as a very human figure, which makes the significance of his work all the more striking. The inclusion of Nussbaum's family's story only highlights the importance of Calmeyer's actions, as does the fact that so much of the book is set after the war rather than during it. The result is a narrative that eschews hagiography in favor of reportage. An affecting, well-constructed account of an undercovered aspect of history.
COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)
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