Shedding Our Stars: The Story of Hans Calmeyer and How He

Shedding Our Stars: The Story of Hans Calmeyer and How He Saved Thousands of Families Like Mine

During the German occupation of the Netherlands, 1940 to 1945, all Jews were ordered to register the religion of their grandparents. The Reichskommissar appointed the young lawyer Hans Calmeyer to adjudicate â€œdoubtful cases.â€ Calmeyer used his assignment to save at least 3,700 Jews from deportation and death, dwarfing the number saved by Schindlerâ€™s famous rescue operation.

Laureen Nussbaumâ€•nÃ©e Hannelore Kleinâ€•owes her life to this brave German official. In Shedding Our Stars, she tells how Calmeyer declared her mother non-Jewish and deleted her and her family from the deportation lists, saving them from death. She goes on to interweave his story with her familyâ€˜s tale of survival, as well as with that of her boyfriend and, later, husband, Rudi Nussbaum. Since in Amsterdam the Kleins were close to the Franks, Anne Frank and her family also figure in book. Going beyond the liberation of the Netherlands to follow both Calmeyerâ€™s and the authorâ€™s story to the end of their lives, Shedding Our Stars is a story of courage in the darkest of times, and of the resilience of the human spirit.

Shedding Our Stars: The Story of Hans Calmeyer and How He Saved Thousands of Families Like Mine