What I Have to Tell: A Memoir

Renate G. Justin, M.D., has touched many of our lives in indescribable ways. Her memoir, What I Have to Tell, touches upon the love and loss, the hope and despair each decade confronted her with and how she fought back and took courageous stands in the face of adversity–with quietude and dignity.

The last time Renate Justin felt safe she was eight years old.  It was May 1, 1934, and the Nazis were marching in the streets of Germany.  In this harrowing and amazing memoir, Renate G. Justin describes her experience as a Jewish child in Germany–the loss of friends, teachers, and innocence.  She is sent away in the middle of the night–without siblings or parents–to a boarding school in Holland.  Meanwhile, her father is sent to a concentration camp, and her mother makes a daring attempt to get him released.

Miraculously, the family reunites, and with the help of the Quakers and others, they travel to America to make a new home.  Here, too, however, they find a world of prejudice–and kindness–both of which impact their lives.  Renate helps European refugee children in NYC and  eventually attends medical school and becomes a family physician.  In a final blow of anti-Semitism, her talented granddaughter, a student at Wesleyan University, is murdered for nothing more than being Jewish.  Despite all this, Renate’s story is one filled with hope and love, compassion and wisdom.

What I Have to Tell: A Memoir, forthcoming from Crystal Publishing, LLC.

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