In April of 1944, during the last year of World War II and two months before the D-day landings at Normandy, Paul N. Frenkel was a fourteen-year-old living happily with his family in the rural Transylvanian town of Hadad, Hungary. Suddenly, without explanation or justification, the family was rounded up with other Hungarian Jews, confined in a factory yard, and then herded into cattle cars and shipped off to Auschwitz.

In Life Reclaimed, Frenkel narrates the story of his life—his prewar idyllic childhood in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, his survival in four Nazi camps as a young teenager, the loss of his parents and most of his relatives in Nazi hell, his daring escape from the death march out of Berga-Elster Camp, and his ultimate success as an entrepreneurial business executive and devoted family man in America.

A story of endurance, courage, and hope, Life Reclaimed represents Frenkel’s determined ongoing efforts to come to grips with his Word War II experience—why his family and the other Hungarian Jews failed to realize their dire peril from the Nazis; why their Transylvanian neighbors and friends actively collaborated with the Nazis or passively abandoned their Jewish colleagues to arrest, enslavement, and death; and why this dark past continues to haunt his life and burden his thoughts.

Martin Hammack, a farmer, a wagon train master, and Indian scout, from Lincoln County Missouri was seeking new adventure after hearing of the virgin lands and opportunity that California offered, from his son who had gone there during the gold rush of 1849. After the son returned home to Missouri in 1853, his father and the other family members decided all the family of seven, along with 18 other members would make up a 13 wagon train and return to California. Little did the family know of the adventure that would forever change their lives. They were seeking opportunity, new land, a promising furture, plus a new life in a fawaway place. Not only did they endure the hardships of wagon train travel, the harsh elements of the weather, desert heat, and mountains, but they also faced an unknown journey through lands of the Plains Indians which were sometimes hostile. For this, they hoped to receive the rich rewards of a new home and a better life. This is an account of their sussceesul six-month journey to Lake County, California, arriving in the winter of 1853, spending the winter in a Gold Mining camp then going to their final destination in the spring, arriving at their final destination in April 1854, one year from the date they left Missouri.

How George Washington survived so many close encounters with the Grim Reaper – in the wilderness frontier, on the battlefield, from serious illness, and in terrifying accidents – can be read only in the story of a steady succession of miracles. For the incredible fact that he survived all of these encounters (except of course the last) to live sixty-seven years is a consummation for which untold millions can be eternally grateful. For it was Washington who with the success of the Revolution and the leadership provided through two terms as President brought forth upon this continent an entirely new way of life. This society, governed as it now was by a spirited reverence for freedom and guaranteed by documents revolutionary in their principles, must have startled the Old World.

When author Josef N. Ferri met a senior honors student from South Park High School named Marilyn, he felt an immediate spark. He drew her into conversation, and the two instantly became involved in something beyond teenage small talk. He reconnected with her a bit later, just as the second half of the 1960s began to unfold.

From the night of their innocent and romantic first date, their journey was filled with wonder and amazement. But almost immediately, they were faced with huge obstacles, as on that same night they almost died in an accident involving a drunken driver.

Ultimately, confusion and misunder-standing separated them forever, but by then they’d lived their most cherished dream. Amid the turbulence and sociopolitical upheaval of the 1960s and the painful chaos of their individual troubled home lives, they found an extraordinary sanctuary in their deep love, and it was “a love that was more than love.” Somehow, it still survives in Trying to Catch the Wind.

Martin Hammack, a farmer, a wagon train master, and Indian scout, from Lincoln County Missouri was seeking new adventure after hearing of the virgin lands and opportunity that California offered, from his son who had gone there during the gold rush of 1849. After the son returned home to Missouri in 1853, his father and the other family members decided all the family of seven, along with 18 other members would make up a 13 wagon train and return to California. Little did the family know of the adventure that would forever change their lives. They were seeking opportunity, new land, a promising furture, plus a new life in a fawaway place. Not only did they endure the hardships of wagon train travel, the harsh elements of the weather, desert heat, and mountains, but they also faced an unknown journey through lands of the Plains Indians which were sometimes hostile. For this, they hoped to receive the rich rewards of a new home and a better life. This is an account of their sussceesul six-month journey to Lake County, California, arriving in the winter of 1853, spending the winter in a Gold Mining camp then going to their final destination in the spring, arriving at their final destination in April 1854, one year from the date they left Missouri.

How George Washington survived so many close encounters with the Grim Reaper – in the wilderness frontier, on the battlefield, from serious illness, and in terrifying accidents – can be read only in the story of a steady succession of miracles. For the incredible fact that he survived all of these encounters (except of course the last) to live sixty-seven years is a consummation for which untold millions can be eternally grateful. For it was Washington who with the success of the Revolution and the leadership provided through two terms as President brought forth upon this continent an entirely new way of life. This society, governed as it now was by a spirited reverence for freedom and guaranteed by documents revolutionary in their principles, must have startled the Old World.

How George Washington survived so many close encounters with the Grim Reaper – in the wilderness frontier, on the battlefield, from serious illness, and in terrifying accidents – can be read only in the story of a steady succession of miracles. For the incredible fact that he survived all of these encounters (except of course the last) to live sixty-seven years is a consummation for which untold millions can be eternally grateful. For it was Washington who with the success of the Revolution and the leadership provided through two terms as President brought forth upon this continent an entirely new way of life. This society, governed as it now was by a spirited reverence for freedom and guaranteed by documents revolutionary in their principles, must have startled the Old World.

"Una lectura apasionante y profundamente compleja, que llega hasta lo más hondo del dolor padecido por los judíos en los campos de Transnistria... Arroja luz sobre un área prácticamente desconocida.”-Jerusalem Post.

“Honesta y valiente. Un monumento que honra a los muertos de Transnistria, a una mancha negra en la historia y a un espíritu resistente.”-The Miami Herald.

Ruth Gold comprueba que el corazón quebrado en mil pedazos puede quebrarse aun más. Ella sobrevivió el infierno del siglo veinte para escribir este desgarrador y poderoso libro. Lean este libro: arroja una luz obstinada de la (difícilmente descriptible) verdad.”-Andrei Cordescu, autor de The Blood Countess

"Un excelente título para aquellos [jóvenes adultos] interesados o que requieren leer acerca del holocausto."-School Library Journal

"La lealtad de Ruth Gold a sus orígenes y su deseo de relatar lo que significó sobrevivir a aquellos que buscaron destruirlos son la esencia de sus memorias.”-Aharon Appelfeld, autor de On the Soul

“Una dramática odisea indicativa de nuestro siglo enfermo -desde la infancia de pesadilla en un campo de concentración a la lucha dolorosa de la mujer adulta para tener una existencia significativa-. Un impresionante documento de resiliencia humana, un luminoso retrato de una superviviente que no se dejó arrastrar por la amargura, dotada de un exigente amor a la vida y a la gente.”-Norman Manea, autor de The Black Envelope

“Los lectores se ven obligados a ir hasta la última página. Ruth no solo cuenta acerca de sus experiencias traumáticas, sino también de sus heroicos intentos para hacer frente y reconstruir su vida. Su determinación de lograr su meta transmite un mensaje de optimismo de cómo el espíritu humano puede prevalecer.”-I.C Butnaru, autor de Waiting for Jerusalem

“Ruth encontró la manera de contar una historia que logra no solo dar una idea de lo que debió haber sido aquello, dándonos así un testimonio de la deportación a Transnistria muy útil para los historiadores, sino también transmitir su experiencia personal como niña pequeña, aterrorizada pero manteniendo al mismo tiempo sus ojos abiertos, deseando no dejar escapar los eventos sin mirarlos. Pero, como lector, encontré el libro muy eficaz ya que no solo es preciso, hecho a partir de una excelente investigación, sino que además está escrito en un estilo sencillo, exento de patetismo, lo que le da una admirable grandeza, tal como se siente al leer algunos capítulos de la Biblia o los cuentos de Grimm.”-Pierre Pachet, autor de 10 libros.

Part history, part memoir, The Goose Girl, the Rabbi, and the New York Teachers: A Family Memoir recounts a narrative of lives lived in dramatically changing times. In the background loom author Deborah Heller’s distant forebears: a maternal great-great-grandmother, the first Jewish woman in her nineteenth-century German village to refuse to shave her head and wear a wig (sheitel) after marriage, who earned her passage to America by driving geese to market; and a seventeenth-century Talmudic scholar, successively chief rabbi of Vienna, Prague, and Cracow, who wrote an important commentary on the Mishnah and was arrested and imprisoned by the imperial authorities.

Echoes of the rebellious Goose Girl and the scholarly rabbi reverberate in the lives of Heller’s parents, born at the beginning of the twentieth century—her mother in Brooklyn, her father in a Russian shtetl. Emerging from very different worlds, they came together as New York schoolteachers, sharing the radical hopes and fears of a generation marked by strong political passions.

Drawing on written and oral history, legal records, and her own memories, Heller follows her parents from their early years through the McCarthy years and beyond. Focusing both on individuals and on the worlds in which they lived, The Goose Girl, the Rabbi, and the New York Teachers illuminates significant moments in Jewish and American history.

In April of 1944, during the last year of World War II and two months before the D-day landings at Normandy, Paul N. Frenkel was a fourteen-year-old living happily with his family in the rural Transylvanian town of Hadad, Hungary. Suddenly, without explanation or justification, the family was rounded up with other Hungarian Jews, confined in a factory yard, and then herded into cattle cars and shipped off to Auschwitz.

In Life Reclaimed, Frenkel narrates the story of his life—his prewar idyllic childhood in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, his survival in four Nazi camps as a young teenager, the loss of his parents and most of his relatives in Nazi hell, his daring escape from the death march out of Berga-Elster Camp, and his ultimate success as an entrepreneurial business executive and devoted family man in America.

A story of endurance, courage, and hope, Life Reclaimed represents Frenkel’s determined ongoing efforts to come to grips with his Word War II experience—why his family and the other Hungarian Jews failed to realize their dire peril from the Nazis; why their Transylvanian neighbors and friends actively collaborated with the Nazis or passively abandoned their Jewish colleagues to arrest, enslavement, and death; and why this dark past continues to haunt his life and burden his thoughts.

In April of 1944, during the last year of World War II and two months before the D-day landings at Normandy, Paul N. Frenkel was a fourteen-year-old living happily with his family in the rural Transylvanian town of Hadad, Hungary. Suddenly, without explanation or justification, the family was rounded up with other Hungarian Jews, confined in a factory yard, and then herded into cattle cars and shipped off to Auschwitz.

In Life Reclaimed, Frenkel narrates the story of his life—his prewar idyllic childhood in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, his survival in four Nazi camps as a young teenager, the loss of his parents and most of his relatives in Nazi hell, his daring escape from the death march out of Berga-Elster Camp, and his ultimate success as an entrepreneurial business executive and devoted family man in America.

A story of endurance, courage, and hope, Life Reclaimed represents Frenkel’s determined ongoing efforts to come to grips with his Word War II experience—why his family and the other Hungarian Jews failed to realize their dire peril from the Nazis; why their Transylvanian neighbors and friends actively collaborated with the Nazis or passively abandoned their Jewish colleagues to arrest, enslavement, and death; and why this dark past continues to haunt his life and burden his thoughts.

Part history, part memoir, The Goose Girl, the Rabbi, and the New York Teachers: A Family Memoir recounts a narrative of lives lived in dramatically changing times. In the background loom author Deborah Heller’s distant forebears: a maternal great-great-grandmother, the first Jewish woman in her nineteenth-century German village to refuse to shave her head and wear a wig (sheitel) after marriage, who earned her passage to America by driving geese to market; and a seventeenth-century Talmudic scholar, successively chief rabbi of Vienna, Prague, and Cracow, who wrote an important commentary on the Mishnah and was arrested and imprisoned by the imperial authorities.

Echoes of the rebellious Goose Girl and the scholarly rabbi reverberate in the lives of Heller’s parents, born at the beginning of the twentieth century—her mother in Brooklyn, her father in a Russian shtetl. Emerging from very different worlds, they came together as New York schoolteachers, sharing the radical hopes and fears of a generation marked by strong political passions.

Drawing on written and oral history, legal records, and her own memories, Heller follows her parents from their early years through the McCarthy years and beyond. Focusing both on individuals and on the worlds in which they lived, The Goose Girl, the Rabbi, and the New York Teachers illuminates significant moments in Jewish and American history.

Part history, part memoir, The Goose Girl, the Rabbi, and the New York Teachers: A Family Memoir recounts a narrative of lives lived in dramatically changing times. In the background loom author Deborah Heller’s distant forebears: a maternal great-great-grandmother, the first Jewish woman in her nineteenth-century German village to refuse to shave her head and wear a wig (sheitel) after marriage, who earned her passage to America by driving geese to market; and a seventeenth-century Talmudic scholar, successively chief rabbi of Vienna, Prague, and Cracow, who wrote an important commentary on the Mishnah and was arrested and imprisoned by the imperial authorities.

Echoes of the rebellious Goose Girl and the scholarly rabbi reverberate in the lives of Heller’s parents, born at the beginning of the twentieth century—her mother in Brooklyn, her father in a Russian shtetl. Emerging from very different worlds, they came together as New York schoolteachers, sharing the radical hopes and fears of a generation marked by strong political passions.

Drawing on written and oral history, legal records, and her own memories, Heller follows her parents from their early years through the McCarthy years and beyond. Focusing both on individuals and on the worlds in which they lived, The Goose Girl, the Rabbi, and the New York Teachers illuminates significant moments in Jewish and American history.

"Una lectura apasionante y profundamente compleja, que llega hasta lo más hondo del dolor padecido por los judíos en los campos de Transnistria... Arroja luz sobre un área prácticamente desconocida.”-Jerusalem Post.

“Honesta y valiente. Un monumento que honra a los muertos de Transnistria, a una mancha negra en la historia y a un espíritu resistente.”-The Miami Herald.

Ruth Gold comprueba que el corazón quebrado en mil pedazos puede quebrarse aun más. Ella sobrevivió el infierno del siglo veinte para escribir este desgarrador y poderoso libro. Lean este libro: arroja una luz obstinada de la (difícilmente descriptible) verdad.”-Andrei Cordescu, autor de The Blood Countess

"Un excelente título para aquellos [jóvenes adultos] interesados o que requieren leer acerca del holocausto."-School Library Journal

"La lealtad de Ruth Gold a sus orígenes y su deseo de relatar lo que significó sobrevivir a aquellos que buscaron destruirlos son la esencia de sus memorias.”-Aharon Appelfeld, autor de On the Soul

“Una dramática odisea indicativa de nuestro siglo enfermo -desde la infancia de pesadilla en un campo de concentración a la lucha dolorosa de la mujer adulta para tener una existencia significativa-. Un impresionante documento de resiliencia humana, un luminoso retrato de una superviviente que no se dejó arrastrar por la amargura, dotada de un exigente amor a la vida y a la gente.”-Norman Manea, autor de The Black Envelope

“Los lectores se ven obligados a ir hasta la última página. Ruth no solo cuenta acerca de sus experiencias traumáticas, sino también de sus heroicos intentos para hacer frente y reconstruir su vida. Su determinación de lograr su meta transmite un mensaje de optimismo de cómo el espíritu humano puede prevalecer.”-I.C Butnaru, autor de Waiting for Jerusalem

“Ruth encontró la manera de contar una historia que logra no solo dar una idea de lo que debió haber sido aquello, dándonos así un testimonio de la deportación a Transnistria muy útil para los historiadores, sino también transmitir su experiencia personal como niña pequeña, aterrorizada pero manteniendo al mismo tiempo sus ojos abiertos, deseando no dejar escapar los eventos sin mirarlos. Pero, como lector, encontré el libro muy eficaz ya que no solo es preciso, hecho a partir de una excelente investigación, sino que además está escrito en un estilo sencillo, exento de patetismo, lo que le da una admirable grandeza, tal como se siente al leer algunos capítulos de la Biblia o los cuentos de Grimm.”-Pierre Pachet, autor de 10 libros.

This memoir novel is a piece of actual history that not only surprised the teller of the tale with its terrifying truths, but also influenced the legal system in this great country of ours.

It involves a young Italian girl who finds herself in agonizing circumstances resulting in her going on trial for murder in 1891 in New York City. The impact that this trial had on her and her family reverberated back to her homeland in Salerno, Italy and the vendetta that perpetrated this tale which has lasted for over one hundred years.