Winding Roads: Story of a Life

By Judith Weintraub

The author Judith Weintraub and her husband Dan are living in Switzerland. Now a pensioner, she can look back on an extremely eventful and demanding life. A life that she describes in her first book "Winding Roads" almost woodcut-like and with a lot of heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rhinestone Publishing
• Release date: Sep 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9783952547687

Judith Weintraub

Judith Weintraub lebt mit ihrem Mann Dan in der Schweiz. Mittlerweile Rentnerin, kann sie auf ein äusserst bewegtes und anforderungsreiches Leben zurückblicken. Ein Leben, das sie in ihrem ersten Buch „Wegbiegungen“ fast holzschnittartig und mit viel Herz beschreibt. Judith Weintraub ist eine vielseitig interessierte und weltgewandte Frau. Sie ist vielsprachig begabt, spricht neben Deutsch und Ivrit (Hebräisch) auch Englisch und Französisch und arbeitete zuletzt als Zivilstandsbeamtin (Standesbeamtin) in einem Schweizer Kanton. Heute, als Rentnerin, hat sie Zeit für eine Rückschau. Sie pflegt ihr Familienleben und einen weiten Freundeskreis, und man kann sich ihrer ruhigen und wohlmeinenden Sympathie schwer entziehen.

Book preview

Prologue

1946

Chana, the young girl from a religious Jewish family in pre-war Poland was finally free again after being a prisoner in a labor camp in Siberia for many years.

Even Israel, her close friend and lover, with whom she had been captured years ago and intercepted at the Romanian border while fleeing in the direction of the promised land, was free again. Their freedom though lasted only a short time. Because Israel, who had been forced to serve in the Russian army during the war years, was taken captive by the Americans as an enemy soldier after the end of the war.

Israel was, however, able to prove in court that he was a Jew and Pole and only had, after a failed attempt to escape, the choice to enter the Russian prison camp or the Russian army. So under duress he became a member of the Red Army. And there, in the Russian Army, he was used as a spy, as he was fluent in several languages, languages that all served the Russians.

Chana and Israel finally reunited using information channels between dispersed groups of expellees. Israel, by that time, was busy in several detention centers to form Jewish groups and prepare them for passage to Israel.

After six dramatic but lost years of her still young life, as Israel later designated these years of their separation, they were now - in 1946 - permanently together - for the first time ever - in the Landsberg camp near Munich, Germany, where many so-called »displaced people« hoped for a new future.

Chana was pregnant by that time, and even gave birth to a son in the camp. Only in May 1947, when the British finally legalized the entry of Jewish survivors into the English Mandate area called Palestine, could the small family fight for a place for the crossing.

The young family managed to virtually »conquer« a ticket for the passage to the country they had chosen to be their future homeland. There, in their new home country, Chana gave birth to three more sons. Her second son, and the first »sabre« (1) was Dan. Even the State of Israel was young in those days.

And Chana and Israel, whose family members had all been murdered back in »old Europe« had a young an growing family. They lived, and loved and suffered in similarly growing and prospering country, a