By Jon Kalish on The Forward…
Michael Forster’s “The New Dream Book and Personal Journal” was not intended for publication. It was printed and distributed to family, friends and members of the Jewish community in New Zealand. Now, Forster’s daughter hopes to send copies to Holocaust museums.
The trauma of the Holocaust caused some Jews to abandon Judaism. For Michael Forster, an aeronautical engineer and professor who died last year at the age of 100, the ordeal of fleeing Europe as a child in the 1930s left him unable — or unwilling — to participate in any form of religious observance. And yet, when he died, he was wearing a Star of David around his neck.
Forster’s father was the prolific Hollywood director Michael Curtiz, probably best known for “Casablanca.” His mother, Mathilde Forster, was a Polish-born Jew active in the European film industry who came to America to pursue her career and for Curtiz to pay her child support.
As Michael Forster recounted, immediately following the burning of the Reichstag in early 1933, he was rescued form a German boarding school where both students and teachers made it known they were sympathetic to the Nazi cause. When he was 12, Forster came to America where his mother eventually succeeded in forcing Curtiz to provide financial support for his son.
Earlier this year Forster’s daughter, Michelanne Forster [pictured], an American who has become a renowned playwright in New Zealand, published his memoir, along with journal entries recounting his dreams.
Read the full article on The Forward here.
