HEIMAT by Paul Marzell
Heimat is an epic story of emigrants leaving post-WWI
Germany in 1929 for America, intending to return someday to Neisse, their
Heimat, as successful American citizens. Before leaving Germany, one emigrant’s
plan began unraveling in Berlin’s Bahnhof, where he saved the life of an
American diplomat. His heroism created a friendship with the diplomat and the three
other emigrants that sustained them through misconceptions of the American
dream, the Great Depression, assimilation
into American culture, and WW II. However, the war severed contact with their
families and sent them on separate paths. To a shipyard to build the means to
carry destruction to Germany and their
Heimat. Into the US Army to fight the Japanese in the Pacific after surviving the
attack on Pearl Harbor. Conscription into Germany’s Wehrmacht to invade France
and Russia and fight against Americans in the Battle of the Bulge. And to the Nuremberg
trials to bring Nazi war criminals to justice.