When life is all you have left
Escape is the only option
Biography. A young German woman's extraordinary journey while escaping Jewish persecution in Nazi Germany and achieving her dream of becoming an American citizen.
Daisy Gronowski's life was far from simple. She grew up the oldest daughter in a semi-affluent family. That affluence, however, would prove to be short-lived. As early as 1936, Hitler began his meteoric rise and the creation of the Nazi Party began. Daisy watched as Jesse Owens refused to return the Fuhrer's salute, and went on to win several gold medals, defeating Hitler's Superior Arian athletes.
In her teenage years she decided to take a stand and joined the Jewish resistance in Berlin . This became increasingly more dangerous and she left the resistance in hope of securing transit to London . She was forced to leave her family behind. Her mother, a former German actress, refused to leave the side of Daisy's sickly younger sister, and her mentally unstable father.
As a result, Daisy became an indentured servant for a farmer and spent two years on various land plots in London , but she had successfully escaped the concentration camps. The journey out of Berlin was perilous and if not for luck and the intervention of a Swiss envoy her life would have ended with dozens of others on the train bound for the port.
After completing her two years of servitude, she worked to create machine parts for tanks and planes as well as worked part time in a prominent hotel across from the palace. It was here that she met and argued with Joseph Kennedy, who was escorted from the premises. During this time, she met her life-long friend, Vivienne, who gave her the name Diane, a name she would continue to use for the remainder of her days.
Diane and Vivienne braved the Blitz and barely survived a bomb that collapsed their apartment building. In and out of danger her entire life, Diane dreamed of nothing more than standing in America as an American. She knew that's where she belonged and at the close of the war, she achieved that goal, traversing the distance from New York to Los Angeles . It was here that she met her husband, Alfred, who died at the age of ninety-one, only last Thanksgiving.
At the age of eighty-seven, Diane still resides in their apartment in Beverly Hills, and is as feisty as ever.
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