Grant Profant McAllister – författare

Separated by Worlds is the family letters to Kurt Baum, provided in both the original German and in English translation. The letters recount the story of a middle-class Jewish family from Bamberg, Germany during the Nazi era. Josef and Marie Baum sent their seventeen-year-old son Kurt to begin a new life in America. The resulting separation, presented in a stream of letters between 1937 and 1941, was as emotional as it was physical. Kurt's struggles to adapt to his new circumstances—difficulties with his American sponsor, failure at a vocational school, and halting steps toward becoming a "normal" American—were met with little understanding from his parents, who were enduring a steadily worsening existence at the hands of the Nazis. His father's desperate pleas to Kurt prior to his forced deportation and murder constitute a final rupture in this poignant story. Richly illustrated, the letters are annotated and contextualized by several essays.