FINDING HEIMAT  -- a novel of WWII

​A Christianized German Jew flees Hitler, returns to Europe with the US Army’s first psyops unit, finds family survivors at war’s end, falls for a young cousin, and must choose between rebuilding his homeland with her, or returning to his refugee’s life and his wife and mother in New York.​

SYNOPSIS​

Books about World War II continue to fascinate readers. While many focus on combat, others on politics, still others on victims’ stories, FINDING HEIMAT tells a tale of a dying father’s manuscript, discovered by his son, a memoir of triumph and tragedy as Gus Lichtenstein, an entitled Berliner and a Jew, returns to his roots as a Ritchie Boy -- interviewing, broadcasting, printing, and writing. On a three-day pass, he witnesses Dachau on the day of its liberation, finds and restores the survivors in his family to their rightful home, falls in love with his young cousin, and gets a chance to begin again – as a victor. Where, in the end, will his loyalties lie? With his adopted country, the USA, his wife and immigrant mother who await him there? Or with the future of his broken homeland, and the whisper of his heart?​

FINDING HEIMAT is an effort to channel a father’s adventures, hopes, doubts and fears crossing Europe in 1944-45, returning to the land of his birth. Anyone interested in World War II history and/or the flush of romance and/or Ritchie Boys (the world’s first psy ops unit) and/or German Jewish identity should respond. 

​The story begins with the discovery of a dying father’s manuscript by his son (myself), and I punctuate Gus’s narrative throughout in reflective chapters as I read through it. 
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On April 28th, 1945, in Luxembourg. Gus Liechtenstein delivers a radio broadcast to German civilians, urging cooperation, even resistance. After his broadcast, he drives all night into Germany, on roads clogged with displaced persons and ruin. As he travels, he recounts for us in separate chapters, the crossing from Normandy, the evolution of his young entitled life and flight from Germany, the story of a brother, twelve years in a concentration camp, and interviews with prisoners of war. At Dachau he experiences the horror of the camps. In Munich, amidst rubble and distant gun fire he searches for a beloved uncle, finds him in Jewish housing, and travels south to Starnberg, where the rest of his family has hidden through the war. At gunpoint, Gus tosses out the Nazi gauleiter who has “requisitioned” Uncle Karl’s elegant home. Gus reinstates his family, and falls head over heels for his young cousin Elyse, who has grown from childhood into a beguiling young woman. 
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Gus gets his orders home. His wife Rachel showers him with love and plans for the future. But an argument launched by a discovered letter from Elyse leads him to take the leap and return to Germany. His uncle Karl, furious that Gus has returned for his daughter, throws her out of the house.  She and Gus are happy, briefly, though she has changed, witnessed the despair around her, and become more confrontational. When Karl delivers a letter from Rachel announcing that she is pregnant, he faces a final choice. 
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BIO

I am a filmmaker and screenwriter by background, and moved into prose only recently. I self-published a novel, a hybrid memoir, How to Make an Indie Feature - aka Shooting Roadkill  Nine strangers meet in a motel along CA interstate 5, two of them doppelgangers, a murderer running from the law and a teacher running from his wife with a student lover. While in LA, I held membership in the Writers Guild of America West. I also worked as a writer of film advertising – trailers, teasers, etc. I taught screenwriting and filmmaking at colleges including Cal Arts, NYU Tisch, BU, Brooklyn, and Emerson. Studied film at Columbia and the AFI. A documentary about Vietnamese refugees was selected for New Directors/New Films, and reviewed nationally. Documentary projects have broadcast on PBS, and been in world festivals. I live now outside San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, with my artist wife, two dogs, and a cat, where I write one-act plays, produced locally, and practice the saxophone.