WAUSAU – Mt. Sinai will host critically acclaimed author and Holocaust speaker Fern Schumer Chapman at 1 p.m. April 30 at Mt. Sinai, 910 W Randolph St., Wausau. The event is free and open to the public.
Chapman is know for having examined the legacy of the Holocaust and the mother/daughter relationship in her books, such as “Motherland.”
Chapman’s mother, Edith Westerfeld, was an unaccompanied minor who fled Nazi Germany for America in 1938. The Westerfelds were one of two Jewish families who had lived in Stockstadt am Rhein, a town of only 2,000 people, for over 200 years. Westerfeld and Chapman returned to Stockstadt 65 years after Edith’s departure. During their trips in the early 1990s, the two women finally grasped how Edith’s early life experiences had defined their relationship. They also discovered the war’s lingering grip on its witnesses in Germany.
Given the traumatic exodus of thousands of children from war-torn Ukraine, Chapman’s work resonates with both historical and contemporary relevance.
