Mindele’’s Journey: Memoir of a Hidden Child of the Holocaust

Mindele's Journey began when her father pulled her onto the rooftop through an attic window to escape Nazi soldiers. Her mother and four siblings were not so lucky. Mindele never saw them again. Her father went into hiding while she was taken to a convent and renamed Mariette. As danger loomed, the Mother Superior sent her to live in the Belgian countryside where she was protected and nurtured by three loving women she called "les tantes." Mariette will have a life-long relationship with them. The "war after the war" began when Mariette's father took her back to live with him in the squalor of a world devoid of meaning for the Jews who survived. They emigrated to America, but she will always feel torn between two worlds. After a broken marriage, her quest for wholeness took her to Iran. Looking up at thousands of shards of broken mirror covering the domed ceiling of a mosque, Mariette suddenly saw herself as all those broken pieces. "Do you remember?" fills the pages as she flees and returns to so many lives: as a Jewish child in a convent, as a free-spirited woman, and eventually as the lover of a German dealing with his own war-tainted history. You are invited to pack your imaginary bags and come along on Mindele's Journey....through war-torn and post-war Europe, the world of the artist and musician she married, the travels to Germany, Israel, Brazil, and Iran, seeking to unravel the secrets of her past. "Mindele's Journey" was edited by Nancy Wait.

Mariette Bermowitz, (born Mindele Birencwajg) was born in Brussels in1938. In 1942 she escaped with her father during a raid by the Gestapo. Her mother and four siblings perished in the camps. Mariette spent a year in a convent in the Belgian countryside, but because of raids by the Gestapo, she was moved to the safer town of Fraiture, where she lived with the sisters of the Mother Superior for the remainder of the war. Her father brought her to Brooklyn in 1951 when she was twelve. Mariette graduated from Brooklyn College and became a French teacher in the New York City Public School System. She was married for ten years to Alan Bermowitz, later known as Alan Vega Suicide, an artist and musician who was at the forefront of the Punk Rock movement of the Seventies. After meeting a young medical student in 1975, she relocated to Shiraz, Iran, where she learned Farsi and taught French and English at Pahlavi University. She traveled extensively in the Near East and returned to the States in 1977. After she retired from teaching she co-founded the Miette Culinary Studio, a cooking school. Several years later she became a language consultant for the international oil company Schlumberger. She also taught a French language immersion course for the State University at New Paltz. She studied writing with Nathalie Goldberg in Taos, New Mexico, June Foley at the New School in Manhattan, Veronica Golos at the 92nd Street Y.In 2005 she began the momentous work of writing the story of her life as a hidden child of the Holocaust, with the assistance of writing coach and editor, Nancy Wait.