Shedding Our Stars

“What is the price of integrity? In occupied Holland, the German bureaucrat Hans Calmeyer (1903–1972) saved at least 3,700 Jewish lives and protected 9,000 more in mixed marriages. After 1945, some Germans saw him as a traitor, or self-serving. The author Laureen Nussbaum, who grew up with Anne and Margot Frank, was among the lucky ones able to remove the yellow star thanks to Calmeyer. Nussbaum’s account proves we need eye-witness testimony to take heed of the past and its legacy in the present.” ―Dr. Penny Milbouer, translator of Between Persecution and Participation: Biography of a Bookkeeper at J. A. Topf & Söhne

“Hannah Arendt has called the destruction of Dutch Jewry ‘a catastrophe unparalleled in any Western country,’ a disaster comparable to the extinction of Polish Jewry. From mid-July 1942 until the end of the war, 93 trains carried some 104,000 Jews to their death, out of a total Jewish population of roughly 140,000. But for Hans Georg Calmeyer, the German official operating within the Nazi killing machine in occupied Holland, the toll would have been even higher. The story of this Righteous Among the Nations is told in compelling and touching detail by one of the rescued, Laureen Nussbaum. Powerful, humane.” ―Dr. Jack Boas, historian, author of Boulevard des Misères: The Story of Transit Camp Westerbork

“This is an inspiring story of quiet resistance from a German lawyer, Hans Calmeyer, who, while playing his role as a loyal German in the ‘dejudification’ of the Netherlands, maintained a rescue operation that saved thousands of Jewish lives, more than Schindler. Among them was Laureen Nussbaum, whose account in this remarkable biography/autobiography is like that of Anne Frank, her friend, in rendering the feel and texture of living in Amsterdam during the war. Nussbaum’s account goes further than Frank’s, however, to describe growing up in the Weimar Republic, living through the ‘Hunger Winter,’ and the challenges of reassembling lives after the war, hers and Calmeyer’s, when Germany was in denial. Gripping and revelatory.” ―Dr. Gayle Greene, author of The Woman Who Knew Too Much: Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation and Missing Persons: A Memoir

“If you loved Anne Frank’s Diary, you must read Shedding Our Stars, Laureen Nussbaum’s compelling account of how her family was saved from the Nazis by Hans Calmeyer―along with 3,700 other Jewish people. This intertwined family memoir and Calmeyer biography gives a unique take on a familiar story. It reads like a novel, showing how two people managed to resist the Nazis in their different circumstances: a fourteen-year-old girl who was helping her boyfriend in hiding and a German bureaucrat who was saving lives under constant scrutiny. You’ll see the world of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam in more intimate detail than ever before―and unlike a novel, you’ll see what happens to the author and Calmeyer after the war. We need this book now, for its example of two people of unimpeachable integrity in the worst of times and for its warning.” ―Mary Fillmore, author of An Address in Amsterdam

“Thanks to Ursula LeGuin I came aboard this powerful vessel: an inspirational story largely unknown, of the Jews of Holland, and the incredible role of the young German official, Hans Calmeyer, and the many thousands of lives thereby saved. Stories of Anne Frank’s family, and Laureen and Rudi Nussbaum’s own stories. Even a story of my own family. Of all our families. I was in tears again and again.” ―Dr. Tony Wolk, Professor of English, Portland State University. author of The Parable of You and the Lincoln Out of Time trilogy

“Beneath the facts and figures that help us come to grips with the Holocaust lies a world of individual life stories. This impressive study of the role of the German jurist Hans Calmeyer reveals how―in the midst of dilemmas over collaboration or resistance, remaining or fleeing, going into hiding or hoping for the best―Jews were saved from the Nazi killing machine. Laureen Nussbaum was one of them, in contrast to many of her neighbors and friends such as Anne and Margot Frank. This book is therefore as much a tribute to a man who saved lives as a commemoration of those who did not survive the war.” ―Dr. Ronald Leopold, Executive Director, Anne Frank House, Amsterdam

“In the midst of the Holocaust, quietly, against protocol and orders, people like Hans Calmeyer, a German bureaucrat, saved uncounted thousands by getting them the right paperwork. Calmeyer did so for this author’s family, as we learn through her richly detailed, intertwined stories (the family also knew Anne Frank). The young Calmeyer had years before reflected in his journal that ‘there are ridiculously small things that are possibly bigger than great heroic deeds.’ We yearn for heroes; this book helps us rethink what real ones look like in this, our modern world of job holders―and that may help us when we, at our desks, also make choices.” ―Dr. Elizabeth Minnich, Distinguished Fellow, Association of American Colleges & Universities, and author of The Evil of Banality: On The Life and Death Importance of Thinking