My Maman Grete

This is the true story of Rémy and Grète, a couple of educators at orphanages in which, after WW II, children of Jewish Holocaust victims were taken care of in France. Where did Rémy and Grète come from? How did they meet and match? What did Rémy endure himself in the Death Camps? Why was Grete's life so short? What were the consequences for their own children? These are the central questions this book endeavors to answer. Moreover, it contains the most interesting, surprising and moving life stories of near relatives of Grète and Rémy.

Born in 1951 near Paris, France, now retired, Michel Stermann is the second child of Grete and Remy. From an early age, after having lost his mother, he was partly raised in Germany by his maternal grandparents. Then, his father remarried and, by and by, an embarrassed silence was set around this dead mother, the image of whom it has become today essential for the author to restore. Once retired, he decided to publicly share the result of his research on the history of his mother, his father, their relatives and their roots. A treasure, the collection of letters written by his mother, was an incomparable help to make her revive. Michel Stermann is fully bilingual in French and German, with a good acquired level in English. He first published this book as Maman Grète in French and German editions, before preparing this English version himself. He is a volunteer reading and translating helper for the Minnesota Society for German Genealogy.