Happy 2015. It's that time of year when all the possibilities seem to open up. January 1 is an arbitrary date, of course, but who doesn't want to believe in fresh starts, in learning from our experiences, even if those experiences sometimes seem arbitrary too? I ended last year on a sad note, with the accidental death of a friend, Jean, who had become very important to me
two Siegmund Kornmehls
Rewriting My Childhood: A Tale of Mystery Relatives
It boggles the mind, how little I knew about my family until I started writing this blog. My mother was an only child and, as far as I knew, everyone in her immediate family had died in Europe. I had one living uncle on my father's side, but he returned to Vienna after the war and I didn't meet him until I was 19. In effect, I grew up without relatives -- at least not the