Armando Lucas Correa's Blog
September 29, 2022
The Night Travelers
Dear Readers:
The day my children Anna and Lucas turned seven, I started writing Lilith's story. The
number seven became a very real obsession. I remember a sentence that floated over a blank page for several days about Ally, Lilith's mother: “She wanted the days to stand still, for Lilith not to grow, for them never to celebrate birthday number seven. If only we could stop time, she thought.” It was around Lilith's seventh birthday that Ally's nightmares began. Mine too.
Sometimes I would see myself in front of my children (I have three: Emma 17, Anna and Lucas, 13) scanning their features, observing their profile, analyzing their skin color so different from each other, the hues of their eyes, the texture of their hair, the size of their forehead, the shape of their nose. Would they have survived Nuremberg racial hygiene laws? Would I have had to sterilize my daughters when they turned seven and have my son undergo a vasectomy?
I studied the Nuremberg racial hygiene laws. I looked for Hitler's source of inspiration to achieve Aryan race perfection. German laws of eugenics were specifically based on the research of doctors from Pasadena, California. In the first half of the twentieth century, the method these doctors had developed gave rise to the involuntary sterilization of some 70,000 people in the United States. Sterilization continued to be practiced in certain states, including Virginia and California, until 1979.
Thus The Night Travelers was born, a story that goes from 1920s Berlin to Havana, from New York to Düsseldorf, to end up between Berlin and present-day Havana. Four generations of women separated by time and united by sacrifice.
When I finished writing The Night Travelers, we were living through the crisis of abandoned children on the U.S.-Mexico border. Separated families, imprisoned children in makeshift cages. I remember, while covering that story as a journalist, hearing many times over how these women who sent their young children alone were called into question and condemned.
What does a mother or father have to do to save their child? Is there an allowable limit?
Sometimes abandonment is the only way to protect someone.
I thought of the parents who sent their children (about 10,000) from Germany to England during the Kindertransport program to save them from the Nazi death camps. Of the more than 14,000 children that Cuban parents sent alone to the United States (Operation Pedro Pan), to protect them from Communism.
Sadly, history tends to repeat itself.
It was in Australia, during the launch of The German Girl in 2017, that someone in the
audience asked me if my novel was inspired by the then-ongoing refugee crisis. In those days, tens of thousands of Syrian refugees were crossing borders in Europe trying to find a country that would take them in. No, I clarified, I had finished writing my book two years before, in 2015.
I am also a refugee, I added.
Since then I have realized that my novels, whether they date back to the Holocaust or deal with distant or current dictatorships, have to do with the fear we have of the other: the one who has a different skin color, believes in a different God than ours, speaks with an accent, has another sexual orientation. The day we accept and respect our differences, that day, I'm convinced, the world will be a better place.
Thank you and I hope to see you soon,
Armando
The day my children Anna and Lucas turned seven, I started writing Lilith's story. The
number seven became a very real obsession. I remember a sentence that floated over a blank page for several days about Ally, Lilith's mother: “She wanted the days to stand still, for Lilith not to grow, for them never to celebrate birthday number seven. If only we could stop time, she thought.” It was around Lilith's seventh birthday that Ally's nightmares began. Mine too.
Sometimes I would see myself in front of my children (I have three: Emma 17, Anna and Lucas, 13) scanning their features, observing their profile, analyzing their skin color so different from each other, the hues of their eyes, the texture of their hair, the size of their forehead, the shape of their nose. Would they have survived Nuremberg racial hygiene laws? Would I have had to sterilize my daughters when they turned seven and have my son undergo a vasectomy?
I studied the Nuremberg racial hygiene laws. I looked for Hitler's source of inspiration to achieve Aryan race perfection. German laws of eugenics were specifically based on the research of doctors from Pasadena, California. In the first half of the twentieth century, the method these doctors had developed gave rise to the involuntary sterilization of some 70,000 people in the United States. Sterilization continued to be practiced in certain states, including Virginia and California, until 1979.
Thus The Night Travelers was born, a story that goes from 1920s Berlin to Havana, from New York to Düsseldorf, to end up between Berlin and present-day Havana. Four generations of women separated by time and united by sacrifice.
When I finished writing The Night Travelers, we were living through the crisis of abandoned children on the U.S.-Mexico border. Separated families, imprisoned children in makeshift cages. I remember, while covering that story as a journalist, hearing many times over how these women who sent their young children alone were called into question and condemned.
What does a mother or father have to do to save their child? Is there an allowable limit?
Sometimes abandonment is the only way to protect someone.
I thought of the parents who sent their children (about 10,000) from Germany to England during the Kindertransport program to save them from the Nazi death camps. Of the more than 14,000 children that Cuban parents sent alone to the United States (Operation Pedro Pan), to protect them from Communism.
Sadly, history tends to repeat itself.
It was in Australia, during the launch of The German Girl in 2017, that someone in the
audience asked me if my novel was inspired by the then-ongoing refugee crisis. In those days, tens of thousands of Syrian refugees were crossing borders in Europe trying to find a country that would take them in. No, I clarified, I had finished writing my book two years before, in 2015.
I am also a refugee, I added.
Since then I have realized that my novels, whether they date back to the Holocaust or deal with distant or current dictatorships, have to do with the fear we have of the other: the one who has a different skin color, believes in a different God than ours, speaks with an accent, has another sexual orientation. The day we accept and respect our differences, that day, I'm convinced, the world will be a better place.
Thank you and I hope to see you soon,
Armando
March 28, 2019
Another Forgotten Story From World War II
The Daughter's Tale
Dear Reader:
Following in the footsteps of my first novel, The German Girl, The Daughter’s Tale tells another forgotten story from World War II—a story that crystallized in my mind the day I met Judith. Judith was only fourteen months old when her family took her aboard the refugee camp St. Louis. After being turned away from Cuba, the US, and Canada like so many others, they arrived in France, where a Catholic family sheltered them until one night, German guards forced her out of the home with her parents and into a provisional internment camp. Their final destination: Auschwitz.
I’ll never forget my visit with Judith in her small, dark apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens. She whispered her story to me, struggling against her failing health. She said she had been relatively happy in the camp with her parents and the other children, until one afternoon, just before everyone was thrown into battered wagons bound for Poland, she found herself in the middle of a forest, holding her father’s hand. Her father came closer and whispered in her ear: “Look up at the treetops.” For an instant, she felt alone. Suddenly, another firm hand, one she didn’t know, took hers. When she turned, her father was gone. She never saw him again.
As I sat there with Judith, transfixed by her words, I felt something blooming inside of me. That afternoon, The Daughter’s Tale was born.
Sincerely,
Armando
Dear Reader:
Following in the footsteps of my first novel, The German Girl, The Daughter’s Tale tells another forgotten story from World War II—a story that crystallized in my mind the day I met Judith. Judith was only fourteen months old when her family took her aboard the refugee camp St. Louis. After being turned away from Cuba, the US, and Canada like so many others, they arrived in France, where a Catholic family sheltered them until one night, German guards forced her out of the home with her parents and into a provisional internment camp. Their final destination: Auschwitz.
I’ll never forget my visit with Judith in her small, dark apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens. She whispered her story to me, struggling against her failing health. She said she had been relatively happy in the camp with her parents and the other children, until one afternoon, just before everyone was thrown into battered wagons bound for Poland, she found herself in the middle of a forest, holding her father’s hand. Her father came closer and whispered in her ear: “Look up at the treetops.” For an instant, she felt alone. Suddenly, another firm hand, one she didn’t know, took hers. When she turned, her father was gone. She never saw him again.
As I sat there with Judith, transfixed by her words, I felt something blooming inside of me. That afternoon, The Daughter’s Tale was born.
Sincerely,
Armando
