After his successful flight from Nazi Germany Louis Maier and his sister experience the start of a new life given to them in the USA. These memories of a young person are an impressive document of contemporary history, because he can describe these years from several angles and comment on them with the hindsight of later years.
Above all he can rely on his extremely precise memory to describe everyday life in a world strange to him with the eyes of an alert adolescent; this alone would make worthwhile reading.
At the same time he creates a contrast between his own hopeful new beginnings and his parents' letters from the concentration camp in Gurs, to which the Jews from Baden had been deported in October 1940. Letters, in which a distressing picture is painted of the feelings of separation, hope of finding a possible opportunity to leave the country and the despair from having to live under intolerable conditions: "How pleased we are that you (children) are not here ..." The letters of the children bring "sunshine" to their parents. The correspondence reflects their efforts to arrange for their parents to leave France. The futile battles with inflexible institutions and human shortcomings become tangible and are at the same time embedded in the everyday life of the children growing up in security.
Louis Maier follows up the meaning of individual lines and deciphers codes in the letter e.g. the special words for "money" and "cemetery", comments on the connotations and thus makes these authentic sources of documentation speak with a clarity, which is seldom experienced. Letters as lifelines, which finally end tragically with the deportation of his parents.
In its intensity a distressingly moving and unique document.*