In 1933, my mother, Gertrude “Trudel” Adler, who grew up in Frankfurt, Germany, wrote in her diary, “There is no future for Jewish youth in Germany. I think I shall go to Palestine.”
Her family and friends in Frankfurt asked. “Why would you leave Germany?” What did she see that they didn’t?
She didn’t get papers to go to Palestine, so when family in Chicago sent her papers, the 21 year old young woman came here.
Seventy-seven years ago, on May 8, 1934 she boarded a ship in Hamburg. Instead of keeping a diary, she wrote frequent letters home describing her adventure. More than 50 years later she translated the letters into English. On May 9, 1934 she wrote her first letter home. I have begun posting excerpts from her letters. Hopefully, each post will be posted exactly 77 years to the day from the date on which it was written. The letters will be accompanied by snapshots and memorabilia she kept in an album I have recently recovered and supplemented by contemporary materials.
I found the following note with the handwritten translations of Trudel’s letters:
Following is a translation of my letters to my dad and two sisters, not a diary. I figured they had enough worries without my adding to it. Father had lost his seat on the stock exchange, which he had held for fifty-three years. Mother died only months before, I, the youngest of three sisters, left home–maybe forever.
In her memory, I started Trudel's Truth on May 8, 2011, Mother’s Day in the United States. May that blog be a tribute to all those who bravely set forth for a new world as skies darkened across Europe.
Leonard Grossman
One of Trudel’s sons
Trudel's Truth
