During my travels, I focused on following my grandmother’s 17 years of stateless. She was without citizenship from the time that Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939 until she became an American citizen in 1956. The pictures below take you to some of the places she lived during that time; there are snapshots of her life and my own. The black and white images are from her archive and the colored photographs are mine.
The images below spans nearly 100 years.
(to note: this page is a work in progress)
Prague, Hana was born in a small town called Kolin in Czechoslovakia. When she was one-year-old, her parents moved their family to Prague. That is where Hana was raised and lived until she fled at the age of 14. Her brother, who was three years younger than her, was born in the city.
From Czechoslovakia to Denmark - Coming Soon
Chaverim - Coming Soon
Denmark, No Other Word Than Home
In March of 2015, I moved in with the granddaughter of one of the women who took in my grandmother during the war. I stayed for a month on that first visit, but in the years that would follow would spend more time here than anywhere else in the world. This selection of photographs are displayed in the We Share The Same Sky traveling museum exhibition.
Back To School - Coming Soon
The End of the World - Coming Soon
The 1943 Rescue of the Danish Jews
For most of the war, Denmark was a relatively safe place for Jewish people, but all of that changed in 1943. In a heroic grassroots operation, the people of Denmark worked together to save 95% of their Jewish population by illegally ferrying them across the Baltic Sea to Sweden. Hana was 18 at this time and it would be the second time in her teenage years that she was forced to flee.
Sweden - Coming Soon
After The War - Coming Soon
Hana in Cincinnati in 1951, less than a year after arriving in America. She wouldn't stay long in Cincinnati and rather decided to save up what money she could and take the train across America to San Francisco.
The California Zephyr, taken by Hana in 1951 and then by Rachael in 2015 and again in 2017.
Hana in Queens, New York City in the 1950s. Hana moved from San Francisco to New York City in the fall of 1952 to marry Ralph Seckel, a German Jewish immigrant who was lucky to get out of Germany in 1938, just before the war began. Their wedding picture is on the left. The two of them had three children. My mom, the middle child, was born in 1956, the same year Hana became an American citizen. The photo on the left is Hana with her daughters; her son was the youngest and born around the time this picture was taken.
