Trauma and Blessings

<p>For me... the past holds the key to who I am which is why I am writing this book at the end of my life. As an immigrant who in 1956 arrived as a nineteen-year old looking for educational opportunities denied to me in post-war Germany the history of my homeland my mother tongue (and its embedded humor) the grandparents parents brothers and sisters I left behind the social customs foods music and culture - embodied my own past which I had to renegotiate in my new country in a long and painful process of assimilation.</p><p><br></p><p>This book gives a biographical account of my own past and that of my family both before I emigrated to the United States and since then. In telling my story I want to recall experiences and memories that have shaped my life and continue to do so in the present. Some of these experiences are remembered as traumatic others as blessings. - Henning Sehmsdorf</p>