description: The diary is a deeply affecting story of the life of an extraordinary woman of the early 20th century. It is also a Holocaust memoir unique in its immediacy as well as its candor and writing. Louise was a professional art historian and critic, a prominent journalist known throughout Europe. Louise Strass, born in Cologne, Germany in 1893 to a solidly middle-class Jewish family, married artist Max Ernst in 1918. Their son Jimmy was born in 1920, but Max and Louise separated soon Max had become infatuated with Gala Eluard (later Gala Dali). After the divorce, Louise's career continued to blossom as did her social life. Then in 1933, with the Nazis newly in power, Louise was a marked woman. She fled to Paris and remained in exile in France, but in 1940, when France fell to the Nazis and the roundup of Jews began, it became clear that her comfortable life in that country was doomed and she tried with increasing desperation to emigrate to America, where her son had lived since 1938. The diary, written from 1941-1942, recalls her childhood, her family’s comfortable (but rigid) lifestyle, and relics of that time which she cherished, some of them still carried with her. She also tells the tale of her love match with Max and her friendships with Europe’s most avant-garde artists. In 1943, after 2 years of moving from Paris and the South of France to Drancy, under increasing threat and aware that she was watched, Louise Strauss-Ernst as finally captured. In June 1944 she was deported on the next-to-last train to Auschwitz.
language: English
title: The First Wife's Tale: A Memoir by Louise Straus-Ernst
titlecomplete: The First Wife's Tale: A Memoir by Louise Straus-Ernst
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Midmarch Arts Press