Hilda

At age sixteen in March 1938 Vienna Austria I stood trembling and frozen in fear among a cheering mob ten feet away from Adolph Hitler.</P><P>Hilda in desperation hope and some Chutzpah cheats Hitler by finding an ingenious way to escape. She miraculously obtains affidavits of support from total strangers in America. Deportation to a concentration camp is near.</P><P>She forces her way into the office of the American Chief Consul and his friend takes Hilda to London two days later.</P><P>She lives in England with foster families. They help her parents flee Nazi-Vienna on the last train before World War II.</P><P>In 1939 on a ship chased and attacked by German submarines Hilda lands in New York and meets her benefactors. In Chicago at age seventeen she proposes to and marries a stranger twice her age to help her parents flee Isle of Man Internment camps. Four years later the family is happily reunited in Chicago.</P><P>Hilda returns to Austria to study with the great German Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka in 1962. Her art career blossoms.</P><P>The odyssey of this gutsy girl continues in California. Hers is the saga of great trauma and living the American Dream.</P>