Steven Muenzer

My parents were born in Germany, married, and immigrated to the United States as 1939 came to an end. World War II had already started when they left Holland on the last boat—the Rotterdam. They managed to escape—aided by an aunt living in New York—what so many didn’t, couldn’t.

The genesis of "Farewell Berlin" was an exploration of what their life must have been like, what they experienced and endured, as the Republic died and the Third Reich rose to power. While not their specific story, some family lore was thrown into the mix. "Farewell Berlin" was his first book. I practiced law for thirty years and lives in St. Paul, MN with my wife Jeanne Scott, a psychologist in private practice.

Why write a book? I always wanted to, but never found the time. Retirement eliminated that excuse. I spent four years writing and editing "Farewell Berlin", a historical novel, a work of fiction.

Why this topic? I was always interested in the interwar period, the deadly calm between two devastating wars. Democracy was in its infancy in Europe and there was so much creativity—Berlin was a center of culture: music, art, literature, cinema, and the sciences. And Jews were in the forefront.

Germany was my parent’s world, but unfamiliar to me. My father was born in Berlin, my mother in Zwickau in Saxony. They married in Berlin, leaving in 1939, on the last boat out of Rotterdam. My father was 29, my mother 26. They survived—most of my father’s large family didn’t; my mother’s family immigrated to Palestine. My parents didn’t come from someplace familiar, the Minneapolis north side or Chicago, places I know or could know.

I set out to understand their world, the everyday indignities, what they must have endured from 1933 to 1939. I wanted to feel what they felt. That probed to be a difficult task, but I tried. It was at times depressing, but satisfying for moments I felt part of their world: the small and not so small indignities, the legal prohibitions, the attacks, and shattered relationships. That history is well documented, so I rooted around, researched, and read.

My parents wouldn’t talk about it and as a kid I didn’t ask. Sure, there were a few stories; and several are in the book. By then I had endless questions, but both my parent had died. So armed with those few stories; a slim memoir of escape by a relative, Herman Mahlerman called The Fugitive; and an imagination, I started writing.

I created Sonny, a young man the same age as my father, born in 1909, 23 years old when Hitler came to power in January 1933. He’s not my father—"Farewell Berlin" is not a family memoir. I imagined a Berlin in the 1930’s, the end of the Republic, the rise and consolidation of the Third Reich and filled it with fictional people. "Farewell Berlin" is a story of Sonny’s maturation: from a guy who did a little of this, a little of that to something much bigger. "Farewell Berlin" ends in the weeks after "Kristalnacht" in December 1938.

"Rest at Journey's End" picks up the story in 1939 as Europe is ready to plunge into the second conflagration in a generation and continues to the end of World War II. The action takes place in occupied France and neutral Portugal.

Both novels are adventure stories: in part a love story, at times heartbreaking, full of interesting characters, and full of action!