Modern-day odyssey: Author traces family history

Holocaust hits home for Silver Spring resident as he traces his parents through Auschwitz and beyond

Maier explains that ‘‘From the Golden Gate to the Black Forest: The Odyssey of a New American in Search of His Parents’ Fate” is ‘‘dedicated to the letters, but I tried to include our own lives.”

The 82-year-old Silver Spring resident decided on the format, with his personal reflections constructed around the letters, because the letters did not tell the full story on their own.

‘‘The letters are very tedious,” he says. Alone, he adds, they seem repetitive and a little mundane.

But Maier’s readers can clearly see the intention behind the actual words, which have been translated from German. The desperation in his parents’ tone is evident as his father grows thinner and his mother worries about having enough food and tries to figure out ways to get packages through.

Much of the letters was written in code, using Hebrew words or nicknames that had been previously agreed upon. For example, ‘‘Rufs” meant ‘‘hunger,” and ‘‘Aunt Marie” meant ‘‘money.”

Sometimes the code concealed dire news. In one letter, written two months after his parents arrived at the Gurs camp in France, Clara knew French officials would be scrutinizing and censoring the letters. She writes:

‘‘Your dear Father and I speak to each other several times a week. It is our wish, with G’ds help to remain healthy and to see you again. ... We have here many old people whose children long for them who have laid out a place for themselves as beautiful and as large as the one in Malsch behind the Dachsbau.”

Maier translates the passage’s true meaning: ‘‘The meadow behind the Dachsbau was the cemetery in our home village, the message: many people, young and old, were dying and were being buried in a large burial ground in Gurs.”

As his parents suffered in Europe, Maier and his sister were adjusting to life as American teenagers in San Francisco. He graduated from high school and joined the military, eventually winding up in his old village to search for clues about what had happened to his parents after their letters stopped years before.

Maier, now a psychotherapist, initially thought his return to the village would be the book’s emotional high point. But, he says, ‘‘readers and fellow therapists are more interested in the early days of foster home placement, acculturation to American society, learning English, going to school in America.”

His parents’ story doesn’t end happily: They were taken to Auschwitz and presumably murdered there. Opening their history to other people is part of Maier’s reason for writing.

‘‘When I was looking for a publisher, I talked to one man ... who said, ‘Your kind of stuff is for your family. Don’t try to publish it or publicize it.’ But a friend of mine said, ‘You aren’t writing for your family, which has been decimated anyway. You are writing for the world.’

‘‘I’m still writing for the world.”

Louis Maier will speak and read from his book, along with novelist Ann McLaughlin, at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh St., Bethesda. Call 301-654-8664.

‘‘From the Golden Gate to the Black Forest” by Louis Maier. Schreiber Publishing, 295 pages. $24.95.