History Events in Portland

Edith Netter is a retired attorney, researcher, and lifelong storyteller who set out to recover a family history that had long gone unspoken. What happens when a family’s story is too painful to tell — and one generation decides it must be remembered? From a beloved Berlin home seized by the Nazis to imprisonment in a German concentration camp, from British internment camps to the Kindertransport, this remarkable journey traces one family’s fight to survive in the face of relentless upheaval. At its center is a little-known and never-before-chronicled escape: a perilous journey on a “sealed train” from Berlin to Lisbon — and, ultimately, to freedom. More than a story of survival, this memoir is a testament to grit, courage, and the stubborn insistence on hope — even when the future is uncertain and the past is too painful to speak aloud. In sharing her grandmother’s voice, Edith Netter helps ensure that memory is not lost to silence — and that stories once hidden can continue to illuminate the present.