Memoir of WWII Weimar, Hey Kids, Want Some Chocolates? Published by AuthorHouse

July 22, 2011 - PRLog -- Melitta Strandberg announced today the release of Hey Kids, Want Some Chocolates?  My Family’s Journey to Freedom, co-authored by George E. Pfautsch and published by AuthorHouse.  Starting with her being taken from her mother just after her birth in 1944 at the Weimar hospital where Hitler conducted experimental research on newborn children, Strandberg’s story of her and her family’s horrifying war years in Nazi Germany is both emotionally compelling and historically revealing.

Hitler’s Weimar hospital medical experiment program was for the most part populated by babies born to mothers from Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania.  Melitta’s family had traveled to Weimar from Romania and so were not considered the “pure race” Hitler intended for Germany and, like other foreigners, became fodder for Nazi brutality.

Melitta was snatched at birth from her mother and she vanished for six months.  A different baby was given to her mother for feeding, but her mother saw that there was no birth mark on this child’s lower arm, as she had seen on Melitta’s at birth, and she refused to accept the clandestine swap.  The staff removed the imposter, but did not return the hours old Melitta to her mother.

The story of Melitta’s miraculous reunion with her family six months later is an extraordinary episode itself, but it is just the first chapter in the tale of dangerous and nightmare-like circumstances the Mohr family found themselves in living next to the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp.

Besides being a dramatic chronicle of the travail of Melitta’s family, Hey Kids, Want Some Chocolates? also provides a unique historical perspective on families such as the Mohr’s who were then forced to make a decision to stay in the Weimar region and fall under the rule of the Soviet Union or to relocate to the American sector after Buchenwald had been liberated by Patton’s Third Army.

In 1945 the Mohrs departed what would become a repressive East Germany and caught the last refugee train to Augsburg, where they were greeted by chocolate bearing American soldiers and the freedom that Melitta, now a citizen of the United States herself, has been able to enjoy ever since.

Hey Kids, Want Some Chocolates? is available in paperback and Kindle through Amazon.com, at AuthorHouse.com, HeyKidsBook.com, and other on-line retailers.

Format: 5 x 8 perfect bound soft cover      ISBN: 978-1-4567-1793-3         SRP: $9.95
             Kindle e-Book                                        978-1-4567-1794-0                  $9.99
Genre: biography and memoir/history

About the authors:
               
Melitta Strandberg was born on September 3, 1944.  Her parents’ story began in Romania and is filled with the many risks and the many narrow escapes that could have ended prematurely their quest for freedom.  Melitta's own quest ended before she was one year old, but those first few months of her life are intriguing and much about them remains a mystery.  Thereafter she has led a successful and typical life.  Her first eighteen years were spent in Germany and the remainder of her life has been in the United States.  Today she lives with her husband, Herb, in Northern California.

George E. Pfautsch spent most of his working life as a financial executive with Potlatch Corporation, a major forest products and paper company.  His final years with them were spent as the Senior Vice President of Finance and the Chief Financial Officer.  Following his retirement, he began writing and speaking on the subjects of morality, justice and faith.  He has published several books on those topics and he views this book as encompassing each of those subjects.