In de archieven van de Amerikaanse Ambassade van Lissabon vonden wij een tot nu toe onbekende brief van Harpo Marx. PJ Grisar interviewde Amanda erover voor de Joods-Amerikaanse krant The Forward.
In March of 1941, a 72-year-old German Jewish widow named Helene Schickler was waiting to join her family in the U.S. She was then living in a convent in Naples with other refugees, and the nuns hosting them were running out of food. She was losing weight, strength and hope.
A doctor came to examine Schickler to determine if she could survive the journey to a concentration camp, where foreigners who couldn’t leave Italy voluntarily had begun ending up. A visit to the local police station made her all the more uncertain she could remain in the country she had fled to two years prior, after Kristallnacht. Even though she had a visa to come to America and a ticket to get there from Lisbon, the Portuguese authorities wouldn’t let her through. She was stuck. Lees verder op de pagina van The Forward. Amanda publiceerde er ook over in Academia Letters op Academia.edu.
