In My Mother’s Footsteps

Caught within the ever-approaching steel jaws of Nazi exterminators, 19-year-old German Jewish girl Leah keeps a diary as she and her family desperately flee Europe for their lives. Across European countries they persevere one hour, one day at a time- always one step ahead.

This memoir of Rebecca’s mother, Leah, reveals a diary whose entries are at times frightening, revealing lives that were fraught with danger, yet filled with a trust in the Almighty and her lucky star. In June, Rebecca (Steppel) Barber, and her husband, journeyed with other descendants saved by the Righteous Gentile, Aristides DeSousa Mendes, as they retreated the flight for life beginning in Bordeaux and concluding in Lisbon, Portugal. Led by the Sousa Mendes Foundation, many of the travelers were able to find exact locations where their parents and grandparents walked, hid or lived while waiting for passports and safe passage.