HANNA AND WALTER: A Love Story

by Hanna & Walter Kohner with Frederick Kohner Kohner ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 14, 1984

In alternating chapters, 1930s sweethearts Hanna and Walter--Czech Jews who were separated during World War II, later reunited and married--recall their respective wartime ordeals. . . with Hanna's sufferings (physical, near-fatal) naturally overshadowing Waiter's (psychological). In 1935 Walter was 20, a would-be actor living in Prague; Hanna was 15, still in their hometown of Teplitz. They fell in love; Walter went to study at the Reinhardt school in Vienna; Hanna went to hotel school. But then came the Sudetenland crisis, the Anschluss, rising anti-Semitism--and, thanks to show-business brothers already in America, Walter was able to get papers for emigration. . . but only for himself and his mother (who wouldn't leave at first), not for Hanna. So, while Walter was doing office-boy work in Hollywood, writing faithfully and trying to bring Hanna to America, she was fleeing from Teplitz to Amsterdam--where she worked as a maid for relatives, then took a job with the German-supervised ""Joodse Raad"" (Jewish-population registry) and fell in love with German/Jewish refugee Carl. They married in 1942, partly to protect Carl with Hanna's special employment status. (""My mother-in-law had sewn my white wedding gown. On it the yellow star looked grotesque."") But nonetheless Hanna and Carl were eventually picked up, sent to a holding-camp in Holland, then to Theresienstadt and finally to Auschwitz--where Carl disappeared to certain death while Hanna (hiding, then aborting her pregnancy) was lucky enough to survive. And, after liberation, faithful Walter--now a US soldier (with some intriguing experience at POW/internment camps)--managed to find Hanna in postwar Amsterdam: ""She stared at me, and then--stretching out her arms--she flew toward me."" Narrated, for the most part, with admirable simplicity and restraint: a modestly affecting Holocaust dual-memoir, without the searing, rough edges of more powerful testimonies.

Pub Date: May 14, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984

Categories: NONFICTION