I was born in 1944 during the Second World War in a small German village near Dresden. After the end of the war this area became part of Soviet-occupied East Germany. When I was eleven, my mother and I escaped to West Germany, where I met my father for the first time. He was one of the few prisoners of war who survived ten years of brutal Soviet labor camps in Siberia. He was finally released in 1955. This experience shaped my entire future as a free spirit with the strong desire for freedom and peace. At nineteen I moved to England to work for a family as “au pair,” in order to learn the language. At twenty-one I was hired by TWA as Flight Attendant and moved to the US. I traveled all over the world for nineteen years. It was time to re-evaluate my priorities, and I took training in the Montessori Method of teaching young children. In 1994, I opened my own Montessori Preschool in Rocklin, California. I loved working there for twenty years. As a retiree, I finally found the time to write down the stories my father dictated on tape about his life in the Russian prison camps, these stories interwoven with episodes from my own life. The book is called “His Story is My Story,” and is a testimonial of the horrific outcome of war and how the post-war generation had to deal with it.

You can reach Elke at temckee@att.net

Book Cover