EXCERPTS FROM MY FATHER'S VISUAL DIARIES - A TONE POEM TO MY MOTHER WRITTEN WHILE LIVING UNDER THE THIRD REICH IN 1934-36 7/11/16

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Diary 1935-36 closed book

Gerhard and Else at the Beach, July 1935

Gerhard and Else Rowing in July, 1935

Today I found a beautiful diary of delicate sketches from 1934-36, in which my father Gerhard Graupe chronicles his day-to-day moments with my mother Else while they were still living respectively in Berlin and Rheda (small town in Westphalia), under the Third Reich,  just before my father fled Nazi Germany on a ship to Rio De Janeiro in 1936 in an attempt to get affidavits and visas for himself, his parents and my mother to come to the USA.

Visits and seeing PYGMALION September and October 1935

At the movies seeing IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT in October 1935

High Holy Days October 1935

Else weeping December 1935

Embrace - notice the ring! December 1935

Under a Light in January 1936 walking and seeing the movie David Copperfield

Preparing to say goodbye, January 10, 1936

Goodbye at train station - January 1936

He spent 2 years living illegally in Rio, engaged to my mother, an attachment that never faltered - until he finally succeeded in getting the papers in 1938. Tragically he was unable to save his parents who died in the Concentration Camps in Theresienstadt.

My parents got married in NYC in 1938.

I also include my own visual diary of my mother while sitting at her bedside in Calvary Hospice drawing her every day for a month. She died on January 7, 2007.

Drawings in Calvary Hospice, 2006/07