Fern Schumer Chapman is a journalist and author best known for her autobiographical book Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust - A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past.
Her work also has appeared in The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, Fortune, and The Wall Street Journal.
Edith, the youngest member of the town's only Jewish family, was sent alone and terrified to America to escape the Nazis in 1938.
Nearly half a century later, mother and daughter return to the village and gradually realize that no one has escaped the shame, guilt and lingering scars of the war.
Edith (the author's mother) was part of a small, little-known American rescue operation that saved about 1,000 children from the Nazis.