Yearning to Breathe Free

On February 1, 1940, Ernestyna Goldwasser arrived alone in New York Harbor. She had left behind her family, to seek sanctuary from the marauding Germans, who had invaded Poland the previous fall. As the child of a father who held US citizenship, Ernestyna enjoyed a special status, as she too, was deemed a US citizen. Unfortunately, her husband, Chaskel, enjoyed no such status. As his wife, pregnant with their first child, embarked on her journey, Chaskel was forced to remain behind, trapped in the inferno that was soon to engulf and incinerate one third of the world’s Jewish population.During her valiant struggle to reunite with her husband, they maintained an intimate and highly emotional correspondence. Many of their letters have been preserved and are presented in this volume as a first-person account of their desperate struggle to find the key that would unlock Chaskel’s imprisonment...before it was too late.