Jean Goodwin Messinger, ’51
Hannah:
From Dachau to the Olympics and Beyond. Paperback,
143 pages; White Pelican Press, August 2005
Jean Messinger is an architectural historian whose previous books include
A Closer Look at Beaver Dam: Guide to Historic Architecture, about her home
town in Wisconsin, and Where Thy Glory Dwells: A Guide to Historic Churches
of Colorado Springs.
This book’s central character, Hannah, is the last survivor of a group
of 146 Jewish children liberated barely alive from the German concentration camp
at Dachau in 1945. She was seven years old and had been interned for four brutal
years. Hannah never saw her family again after being separated
upon arrival at the camp. Taken in by German nuns who ran a convent high in the
Bavarian Alps, those who recovered went to school for the first time and received
homemade
wooden shoes for their previously unshod feet. Taught to ski by the nuns, as
a teenager Hannah was chosen to train with the German Olympic team, although
not identified as a Jew. She participated in the 1956 games at Cortina, Italy.
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