Finding Edith Surviving the Holocaust in Plain Sight

Finding Edith: Surviving the Holocaust in Plain Sight is the coming-of-age story of a young Jewish girlchased in Europe during World War II. Like a great adventure story, the bookdescribes the childhood and adolescence of a Viennese girl growing up againstthe backdrop of the Great Depression, the rise of Nazism, World War II, and thereligious persecution of Jews throughout Europe. Edith was hunted in WesternEurope and Vichy France, where she was hidden in plain sight, constantly afraidof discovery and denunciation. Forced to keep every thought to herself, Edithdeveloped an intense inner life. After spending years running and eventually hidingalone, she was smuggled into Switzerland. Deprived of schooling, Edith workedat various jobs until the end of the war when she was able to rejoin hermother, who had managed to survive in France.

After the war, the truth about the deathcamps and the mass murder on an industrial scale became fully known. Edithfaced the trauma of Germany’s depravity, the murder of her father and olderbrother in Auschwitz, her mother’s irrational behavior, and the extreme povertyof the postwar years. She had to make a living but also desperately wantedto catch up on her education. What followed were seven years of struggle,intense study, and hard work until finally, against considerable odds, Edithearned the Baccalauréat in 1949 andthe Licence ès Lettres from theUniversity of Toulouse in 1952 before coming to the United States. In America,Edith started at the bottom like all immigrants and eventually became aprofessor and later a financial advisor and broker. Sinceher retirement, Edith dedicates her time to publicly speaking about herexperiences and the lessons from her life.