INHERITANCE

Indescribable tragedy births love, resilience, and discovery in this historical memoir detailing one family’s escape from Germany in the 1930s.

The sheer massive number of those killed in the Holocaust can “obscure the reality that embedded within these numbers are individuals—people who loved someone and were loved by someone else.” In this historical memoir, Scheidt aims to “open space for, and hear, the voices that rehumanize the experience of those who have been victimized by and survived genocide and mass atrocity.” In 1988, after his mother’s death, the author discovered a box of letters and other family papers saved from the war years. The contents of the box led to Scheidt’s decade-long examination of his family’s perilous journey to freedom. The story begins with Bruno Scheidt—the author’s beloved and brave father—who was accused, in a Gestapo record, of “stealing commercial secrets” and “was transformed from a well-established businessman in his native city to a refugee fleeing for his life.” As the Nazi Party closed in, Bruno left his family and the “love of his life,” Suse Ballin, for the promise of freedom in France. With the assistance of Kat Rohrer, a filmmaker and the descendant of a Nazi officer, Charlie Scheidt follows his family’s peregrinations through Germany, France, Holland, and New York City. Along the way, the author felt closer to not only his parents, but also to his lost aunts, uncles, and grandparents and a period of history that transformed the world. Scheidt honors his family, and the countless families lost to the tragedy of the Holocaust, with his reflective prose and insightful revelations. The contemporary and historical narratives are evenly paced, well researched, and thoughtfully paralleled; the author grants “meaning to the loss and suffering” to each victim and survivor. Scheidt’s story is an important one, full of powerful history, life, loss, and, above all else, hope.

A heartbreaking memoir that honors the legacy of survivors.