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Hannah
From Dachau to the
Olympics and Beyond
Jean Goodwin Messinger
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Price: $14.95
Softcover | 144 pages | ISBN: 0-165-12866-1 |
Summary
Hannah is the last survivor of a group of 146 Jewish children liberated barely alive from the German concentration camp at Dachau in 1945. She was seven years old and had been interned for four brutal years. Hannah never saw her family again after being separated upon arrival at camp.
Taken in by German nuns who ran a convent high in the Bavarian Alps, those who recovered went to school for the first time and received homemade wooden shoes for their previously unshod feet. Taught to ski by the nuns, as a teenager, Hannah was chosen to train with the German Olympic team, although unidentified as a Jew. She participated in the 1956 games at Cortina, Italy.
Her life in Germany after leaving the convent and serving briefly in the Israeli army is a roller coaster of achievement, disappointment, excitement, frustration, fulfillment, and more heartbreak. Her American husband was lost in Vietnam; her only son was killed in a plane crash. In her own words Hannah describes these tragedies and triumphs and analyzes their psychological residue affecting her productive life today in Colorado. Hannah's remarkable resilience and recovery will have an inspiring and lasting effect on those who read this narrative and learn some important life lessons.
The text includes commentary on broader issues of the Holocaust and concludes with powerful versus written more than fifty years after the event by an American veteran who participated in the liberation of Dachau.
The narrative raises questions that will generate thought-provoking discussion by book clubs, adult Sunday School classes, retirement centers, and high school history classes. (A list of suggested topics is at the back of the book.) All will wonder how they would have behaved under the same circumstances.
About the Author
Jean Messinger is an architectural historian by academic training -- an M.A. in art history from the University of Denver, B.A. in art history from Lawrence College (now University) in Appleton, WI. Her previous books are about historic preservation and they include award-winning A Closer Look at Beaver Dam, about her home town in Wisconsin, and the popular Faith in High Places, Historic Country Churches of Colorado. The latter is also a slide lecture program still being given around the state ten years after the book's publication in 1995.
Jean conducts workshops to encourage and assist people to write their life story and family history. Her next book in progress is also the result of that interest in "ordinary" people's interesting lives; she is recording civilian WWII stories of people living in Colorado. These include a witness to the bombings of Hiroshima, a Jewish D-Day army nurse, Japanese internment camp residents, etc. It was natural she would encounter Hannah and recognize the importance of getting her story into print.
Jean and her dentist husband lived in Colorado Springs for 40 years, where Jean taught high school English and college art history, and lectured and wrote about historic architecture of that city. The Messingers have retired to Windsor, Colorado and enjoy seven grandchildren living in the area.
Reviews
"Everyone should read this book!"
- Eileen and W.A., Colorado Springs
"How fortunate you found her - or she found you - or that somehow fates brought two women together - one to tell the story and the other to put it into a book for the rest of us to read,"
- Joan, Auberry, CA
"Why does she not hate? Makes one want to touch her and perhaps absorb some of her strength."
- Joanne, Port Washington, WI
"What a wonderful job you have done recording Hannah's life, which EVERYONE should read ... I hope that many will benefit from reading it ... The account of Hannah's life and survival must help us to understand what the Jewish people went through and encourage us not to shut our minds to what the human race is capable of, given the circumstances."
- Louisa, York, England
"I just couldn't put it down, although I had heard Hannah speak before."
- Jan, Longmont, CO
"... It certainly speaks to the resilience of a young child and the caring of people who helped her through those early as she struggled to deal with the memories ... I think it would be an excellent choice for a book club where every member reads the book and then the group devotes a meeting for discussion. Would it be appropriate for a youth group? My response would be an enthusiastic 'Yes' ... There is too little education for young people about that period of history, and there are important lessons to be drawn from that knowledge."
- Kent, Windsor, CO
