Table of ContentsRecommendations viiIntroduction xiPART 1 HOLOCAUSTSpider Webs in my Head 3How I learned to be a Lady 7Keeping a Child 10Into the Ghetto 14Registered 17Selection 21The Boy who needed a Playmate 24Jacket Exchange, Train Ride, and Arrival 27Lice 31Hunger 34Swedish Buses 37So, What is it all about? 40Holding Time 48PART 2 LIFE IN SWEDENSweden, The National Anthems of My Life 55On the Stairs 60Thoughts of a very Childish Sixteen-Year-Old 65Leaving 70Two Weeks at Sea 73PART 3 NEWCOMER IN AMERICABecoming an American Girl 83Popping along in America 86School Girl, dealing with Numbers 91Of Cows and Cowards 98AMBJ 102The Hess Dress 110Sputnik and Shakespeare 118Are we there yet? 121PART 4 LIFE IN ISRAELThe Six-Day War 129The Balabusta 147Ali and his Israeli Teacher 150PART 5 BECOMING A WIDOWWho is Willa? 165Finality 172Who am I now? 180Sitting Shiva 188Morning Walks in Mevaseret Zion 195The Improbable Richard 200PART 6 LIFE IN PHILADELPHIA. FINDING CONTENTMENTHappy New Year! 213Becoming a Docent 221Meeting Charles 226The Good Citizen 233Memory of Forgetting 241The Question they will invariably ask 245For Teachers and their Students 249Have an Emily Moment 259My Emily Moment 264Some Historic Background 265Photos 267About the Author 275Questions for Discussion 277Notes 281Remembering Ravensbrück is the story of the gripping journey Natalie Hess embarks upon, travelling through the darkest moments of the Holocaust and coming out stronger and wiser at the other end.In her luminousand engrossing memoir, Natalie Hess takes us from a sheltered childhood in a small town in Poland into the horrors of the Holocaust.When her parents are rounded up and perish in the Treblinka concentration camp, a Gentile family temporarily hides six-year-old Natalia. Later, protected by a family friend, she is imprisoned in her city’s ghetto, before she is sent to a forced-labor camp, and finally, Ravensbrück Concentration camp, from which, at nine, she is liberated.Taken to Sweden, by the Swedish White Cross busses, she adapts to and grows to love her new home, becoming a “proper Swedish School girl”, until, at sixteen, she is claimed by relatives and uprooted to Evansville, Indiana. There, she must start over yet again, mastering English, and ultimately earning a PhD in literature.As a married young mother, she and her husband move to Jerusalem where they and their three children experience life as Israelis, including the bombing of their home during the Six Day War. Back in the States, they settle into life in Arizona until Natalie’s husband dies unexpectedly when a teenager runs a stop sign and hits his car. In her grief, Natalie moves to Philadelphia to be with her daughter and discovers that life still holds surprises for her, including love.Hess’s compelling portrait in which terror is muted by gratitude and gentle humor, shares the story of so many immigrants dislocated by tyranny and war. Through her experience as a child separated from her parents, a teenager, young woman, wife, mother, college professor, and later a widow, Hess shows the power of the human spirit to survive and thrive.In her luminousand engrossing memoir, Natalie Hess takes us from a sheltered childhood in a small town in Poland into the horrors of the Holocaust.When her parents are rounded up and perish in the Treblinka concentration camp, a Gentile family temporarily hides six-year-old Natalia. Later, protected by a family friend, she is imprisoned in her city’s ghetto, before she is sent to a forced-labor camp, and finally, Ravensbrück Concentration camp, from which, at nine, she is liberated.Taken to Sweden, by the Swedish White Cross busses, she adapts to and grows to love her new home, becoming a “proper Swedish School girl”, until, at sixteen, she is claimed by relatives and uprooted to Evansville, Indiana. There, she must start over yet again, mastering English, and ultimately earning a PhD in literature.As a married young mother, she and her husband move to Jerusalem where they and their three children experience life as Israelis, including the bombing of their home during the Six Day War. Back in the States, they settle into life in Arizona until Natalie’s husband dies unexpectedly when a teenager runs a stop sign and hits his car. In her grief, Natalie moves to Philadelphia to be with her daughter and discovers that life still holds surprises for her, including love.Hess’s compelling portrait in which terror is muted by gratitude and gentle humor, shares the story of so many immigrants dislocated by tyranny and war. Through her experience as a child separated from her parents, a teenager, young woman, wife, mother, college professor, and later a widow, Hess shows the power of the human spirit to survive and thrive.