PART ICONTENTSThe beginnings 3The Lulows and the Löwensteins 9 Between Riga and Paris 20 Berlin, Meinekestraße 9 26 Just like the movies 44 School begins 57 Riga. Elizabetes iela 23 61 Father and Mother 75 Books. Theater 81 The Luther-Schule 91 Berlin changes – life changes 96 Europe changes 102 Riga, Vidus iela 9 110 First love 123 Like something out of Pushkin 129PART IITHE SECOND LIFEShock without therapy 137 The last act begins 152 Under the yellow star 156 Emīlija 163 Husbands and wives 168 Ghetto 173 People. Destinies 187 The curtain falls in Vidus iela 199I become a fugitive 204 The Baptists come to my help 212Perfer et obdura – be patient and tough 217 A milder climate in Pārdaugava 224Paul Schiemann 232 The solution draws near 247Afterword 259 Photos 261Amsterdam Publishers Holocaust LibraryAn important Holocaust memoir written by one of Latvia's most prominent authors, Valentīna Freimane.Before the start of WWII, some 93,000 Jews lived in Latvia. Almost half of them, 43,000 people, resided in Riga. Only 14,000 survived WWII.Valentīna Freimane’s memoir Farewell, Atlantis is unusual among the works dealing with the Holocaust in Latvia. In beautiful prose, Freimane describes her early life in the “lost Atlantis” of Europe before Hitler’s rise to power. She spent her youth in Paris, Berlin, and Riga – a member of a fascinating extended Jewish family, the daughter of a prominent lawyer whose work brings him and his wife and daughter in contact with many cinema, theater, literary, and musical personalities of the time. The education she enjoys gives her a cosmopolitan perspective on her experiences and on European history, shaped by the classics and German humanists. She describes her life under the first Soviet occupation of Latvia and the years under Nazi rule, when her parents and most of her extended family members were taken to the Riga Ghetto and murdered, and her husband was imprisoned and killed as well. At the age of 20 she became a fugitive sheltered by families of diverse ethnicities and walks of life. “In the very worst period, in the most cruel, most inhuman time, I regained my faith in human nature,” the author said in a 2016 interview.Extraordinarily intelligent and well-read, Valentīna Freimane allows the reader to share her own intellectual growth in a turbulent era.Before the start of WWII, some 93,000 Jews lived in Latvia. Almost half of them, 43,000 people, resided in Riga. Only 14,000 survived WWII.Valentīna Freimane’s memoir Farewell, Atlantis is unusual among the works dealing with the Holocaust in Latvia. In beautiful prose, Freimane describes her early life in the “lost Atlantis” of Europe before Hitler’s rise to power. She spent her youth in Paris, Berlin, and Riga – a member of a fascinating extended Jewish family, the daughter of a prominent lawyer whose work brings him and his wife and daughter in contact with many cinema, theater, literary, and musical personalities of the time. The education she enjoys gives her a cosmopolitan perspective on her experiences and on European history, shaped by the classics and German humanists. She describes her life under the first Soviet occupation of Latvia and the years under Nazi rule, when her parents and most of her extended family members were taken to the Riga Ghetto and murdered, and her husband was imprisoned and killed as well. At the age of 20 she became a fugitive sheltered by families of diverse ethnicities and walks of life. “In the very worst period, in the most cruel, most inhuman time, I regained my faith in human nature,” the author said in a 2016 interview.Extraordinarily intelligent and well-read, Valentīna Freimane allows the reader to share her own intellectual growth in a turbulent era.