"For me... the past holds the key to who I am, which is why I am writing this book at the end of my life. As an immigrant who in 1956 arrived as a nineteen-year old, looking for educational opportunities denied to me in post-war Germany, the history of my homeland, my mother tongue (and its embedded humor), the grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters I left behind, the social customs, foods, music, and culture - embodied my own past which I had to renegotiate in my new country in a long and painful process of assimilation.

This book gives a biographical account of my own past and that of my family, both before I emigrated to the United States, and since then. In telling my story, I want to recall experiences and memories that have shaped my life and continue to do so in the present. Some of these experiences are remembered as traumatic, others as blessings." - Henning Sehmsdorf