Dear Helga, Dear Ruth: Letters That Bind a Friendship Shattered by History - Softcover

Harris, Helga

9780615163031: Dear Helga, Dear Ruth: Letters That Bind a Friendship Shattered by History

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0615163033 ISBN 13: 9780615163031

Publisher: H&H Publishing, 2007

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With tears running down their faces, Ruth and Helga hug, "I love you. I will miss you. Write soon." Ten-year-old best friends, heartbroken, say good-bye at the Berlin train station in 1938.

Dear Helga, Dear Ruth tells the story of two girls whose comfortable lives in Berlin are shattered by history. Helga, with her family, lands in New York City. Ruth finds herself in Santiago, Chile.

Helga rebels against all things German; the language, and even Volkswagens. She absorbs her new democratic nation with liberal enthusiasm and fierce independence.

Ruth in contrast, comfortable with the European community of ex-patriots, follows the Jewish/German expectations her family holds for her. At seventeen she marries a doctor twice her age. Through letters, the best friends share the transformation of their lives over the next six decades.

Dear Helga, Dear Ruth relates their love and respect for each other, despite enormous differences in the cultural changes their new homelands require of them.

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