Helga: A Memoir of Privilege, War and Family
The glamour and beauty of Helga’s youth still radiate from her face, defying both her eighty-eight years and the events thereof. Look closely and you will see a shield of Germanic pride: the self-control over her expression has yielded very little over the years. “I have tended to be stoic about life,” she says, “believing that complaining makes things worse.”
Only recently has she begun to sleep past 7:15 or allow herself the luxury of a nap. “I slept perfectly well in the night, and I have never thought it was right to lie around in the daytime.”
Helga’s life is inextricably linked to both World Wars, in Europe and in the Pacific. Born in 1925, only seven years after the end of World War I, she was torn from her beloved homeland and shipped to Japan at the age of nine. The month-long journey during winter, without relatives to comfort her, would have traumatized a different child. But Helga’s young spirit triumphed over her sense of loss—all that she was leaving behind—and focused on the excitement of the journey. An ocean cruise to exotic Japan! And, at the journey’s end, a reunion with her estranged mother.
Helga survived the WWII firebombing of Japan in 1945 and much more. Real Life Stories, LLC is pleased to announce Helga’s memoir available on Amazon.com now . http://www.amazon.com/dp/0979135583/ref=rdr_ext_tmb