My Mameleh: A Memoir

It was late, dark and cold. The little band of travelers were huddled together on the bench of an old train hoping to escape the tightening Nazi noose. Suddenly, they heard the conductor’s loud voice, “Vos papiers, s'il vous plaît!” (Papers, please!). My mother’s identity card had been stamped not once, but twice with the word, “Juif.” She knew that her life and that of her friends now rested in the palms of a stranger, a government official whose job it was to hand them over to the Germans.

This is one of the many miraculous escapes found throughout this book. It is a story of survival, not just from the Holocaust, but from old world poverty, broken love and a tenuous peace in order to finally achieve the “American Dream.”

Mariette Goldberg was born in a refugee camp in Lausanne, Switzerland. She grew up in Paris and emigrated to the United States with her parents at the age of 13. Later, she studied comparative literature and taught college French and linguistics, while raising three lovely boys. She and her husband Edward (Eddie) are the proud grandparents of four perfect grandchildren, three best-behaved grand-puppies and one most personable turtle.This book represents the culmination of a lifelong passion: to tell Mariette’s mother’s incredible story. A consummate listener, the author was raised by an equally consummate storyteller whose story had to reach a wider audience.Mariette is currently working on a second book – a novel based on one of the characters in ‘Mameleh’.