Monday, May 23, 2011

Teens Link 1938 Friends-- Part 1

From the May 14th Chicago Tribune by Mick Swasko.

"Two who fled Nazi Germany as girls are reconnected by Naperville students' efforts.

Here is a group of teens who are getting a great history lesson.

"It was a brief email that rekindled an equally short childhood friendship 73 years ago." Gerta "Gertie" Frumkin is living in Seattle and the email made it to Edith Westerfield, 86, in Skokie, Illinois.

Determination and technical knowledge enable eighth grade students at Naperville, Illinois' Madison Junior High School, got the two together for the first time since they spent about two weeks together escaping Nazi Germany in 1938.

Edith Westerfield's daughter, Fern Schumer Chapman, had visited the students earlier this year to discuss books she had written about the 1930s, based primarily on the experiences of her mother who traveled to America as a twelve-year-old without her family.

Westerfield was part of a small and little-known American effort called One Thousand Children to remove Jewish children from Germany.

"This was a very quiet program," she said. They took ten kids out (at a time) on cruise ships."

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