WEST BRATTLEBORO-The Brattleboro Area Jewish Community and All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church are co-sponsoring a book reading and presentation on All for You: A World War II Family Memoir of Love, Separation, and Loss by New Hampshire author Dena Rueb Romero.
The free event will take place Saturday, Oct. 4, at 7 p.m., at the West Village Meeting House, 29 South St.
Rueb Romero grew up in Hanover, New Hampshire, the daughter of a Lutheran mother and a Jewish father, both refugees from Nazi Germany. Her book, All for You, offers a memoir of her parents' journey.
Emil Rueb was the son of a successful German Jewish realtor and businessman; Deta was a well-regarded children's nurse from a large Lutheran family. After the Nazis came to power, the Nuremberg Laws made relationships between Jews and "Aryans" illegal. To stay together, their only hope was to emigrate.
Deta soon left for a childcare job in England, but Emil lingered, hesitant to leave family and insecure about starting over as a professional photographer. When he did get out, landing first in New York before securing a position in Hanover, his main focus was to be financially stable enough to reunite with Deta and to bring his parents, sister, and brother-in-law to America.
Romero uses both family documents and historical research to flesh out her parents' story: their love across years of separation, the growing hostilities toward the German Jewish population, her grandparents' increasing desperation, and Emil's hard work to help them all. All For You is "a beautiful testament to love, a deeply moving tribute to loss, family, and a compassionate recounting of this period of her father's life," wrote organizers in a news release.
The Oct. 4 event will be the only reading Reub Romero will be offering in southern Vermont, and, organizers said, "the story is especially relevant for these times we are living in." For more information, call 802-254-9377 or visit ascvt.org.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.